Works by Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e, Caleb Teicher and Company at Gibney

Last night, at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, curator David Parker introduced his Double Plus evening as "a utopian event" and "not an ordinary combination of artists." Here we have Dylan Crossman (Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e), with his elite Cunningham/post-Cunningham pedigree. And then there's Caleb Teicher (Caleb Teicher and Company), a young Bessie-winning prince of tap collaborating with swing dance champion Nathan Bugh. Combining these disparate sensibilities and styles into one show is far from your everday New York programming. But what makes sense to Parker is that these artists take what we've come to expect from their respective art forms and ask more of them.

But first, Crossman asks something of us. The opening of [Insert Title] makes us crane our necks to see him and three fellow dancers--Sumi Clements, Jason Collins and Sarah Harrmann--lined up off to the far right of Gibney's theater space in light that both catches their flesh and surrounds it in murk. It's a theatrical attention-getter, though beyond that effect, its purpose remains unclear. When the dancers soon swarm into the central space directly in front of us, there's nothing reserved or shadowy about them. Squatting, lunging, cantilevering, they readily take the measure of a space now theirs to inhabit.

I'd been contemplating Lois Weaver's Long Table discussion format and had just watched Antonia's Line, the 1995 Dutch film where scenes of a dinner table teeming with various and sundry characters served as Weaver's inspiration. So I was amused to see a long table set up behind Crossman and his dancers. Dark, plain, bare and sturdy, it seemed to represent home or, at least, a base to touch, slouch upon, back up against, even mount and dance across in the encounters and confrontations that would ensue as a muddy audio recording--a speaking voice run backwards?--rambled on unhelpfully.

Left-right: Sumi Clements, Sarah Harrmann and Jason Collins
in Dylan Crossman's [Insert Title]
(photo: Scott Shaw)

This long table is the one constant in a variation of interpersonal arrangements. Encircling it, dancers move right up into or back away from one another's personal space. They gaze into one another's eyes as we both project what we think is happening and shy away from those projections. In fact, our own back-and-forth can render us watchers transparent to ourselves. We see ourselves seeing something that might or might not be there. And doesn't that feel odd? Shouldn't we mind our business? Well, if we should mind our business, what are we doing at a dance concert watching bodies in motion?

Well, Crossman and crew, especially feline Clements, are adroit postmodern movers. They master clean form while suggesting human narrative when bodies are in proximity to other bodies.

Meet Ella, then, makes the perfect follow-up--all about two male bodies in near-constant and joyous proximity, along for the swooping, sliding fun ride of recordings of Ella Fitzgerald singing live. And, yes, as a friend noted, the late great jazz vocalist gets a bio in the program notes. Rightly so. Her agile voice--with all its daredevil technique, its silky warmth and delectable playfulness--is an essential and equal partner here, in high form, as are Teicher and Bugh.

I had only ever seen the mercurial Teicher tap dance, a wonderful thing in itself. I had never seen Bugh; Meet Ella was my introduction to this lighthearted charmer. The two men, wearing regular two-toned oxford shoes, not tap shoes, make nonstop rhythmic "music" throughout their bodies. Swing dance, jitterbug, ballroom, even dashes of Nicholas Brothers virtuosity flow though the duet, powered by standards like "Our Love is Here to Stay," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and--so lusciously--the Lionel Hampton/Sonny Burke/Johnny Mercer "Midnight Sun."

Was there such a night?

It's still a thrill I don't quite believe;

But after you were gone

There was still some stardust on my sleeve!

Nobody sings it like Ella....

Saucy, sexy Meet Ella leaves us with stardust--a great performance and an instant classic.

Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e and Caleb Teicher and Company continue through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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Go on singing, more, more: Jobim remembered

So I come back to my first note
As I must come back to you...

--"Samba de Uma Nota Só"/"One Note Samba" by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça 

Music according to Tom Jobim (aka, The Music according to Antonio Carlos Jobim), a new film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, takes me back not only to the heyday of bossa nova but to my own days of mad love for the sounds of Brazil and Brazil-infused jazz. Jobim's lilting, romantic music flashed through my nerves and sent my young imagination reeling. Now dos Santos brings all of that back with this unusual documentary tribute, soon to open at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New York Film Festival 2011.

Rejecting the expected voice-over and talking-heads approach, Dos Santos allows music--plus an extraordinary collage of vintage, and sometimes quite worn, film and video performance clips--to tell the story of Jobim's career in Brazil and abroad and the huge influence his songs had on performers around the globe. If you're old enough, you probably remember Jobim for "Garota de Ipanema" ("The Girl from Ipanema")--a worldwide 1960s hit that gets satiric treatment here through a surprising series of perfomance clips from the cute to the beyond-belief ridiculous. But there was so much more covert power to the delicious, delicate magnetism of Jobim's range of songs. You can feel that sensual, if wistful, pull in "Dindi," "Insensatez" ("How Insensitive"), "Desafinado" ("Off key"), "Wave," "Corcovado" ("Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars") and the haunting "A felicidade" ("Happiness"), the theme from Black Orpheus. Written solo or with lyricists like Newton Mendonça and Vinicius de Moraes, these lovely standards are songs to curl up inside.

Nearly seventeen years after Jobim's passing, it's both cheerful and poignant to watch him perform his music in this film. The composer's warmth and joy animate his every appearance even as we watch time thicken and age him. Even in one of his late performances, which looks rather labored, you can sense his commitment to the music and to his audience.

Dos Santos and co-director Dora Jobim, Jobim's granddaughter, have compiled footage recording sensational interpretations of Jobim songs by Gal Costa, Silvia Telles, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diana Krall (who, sexy enough in English, wows the Brazilians by singing in Portuguese), Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Jane Monheit, Stacey Kent and Milton Nascimento among many others. If I could design a heaven, Sarah Vaughn would be singing "Wave," an astonishingly sensitive Frank Sinatra would be dueting with Jobim on "Girl from Ipanema," and Ella Fitzgerald would smash her bottle of champagne on the good ship "Desafinado."

To borrow and flip some lyrics from "How Insensitive," let me be clear: This love affair ain't over.

Music according to Tom Jobim

by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Brazil, 2011 (Regina Films)
Portuguese with English subtitles
88 minutes

October 2 at 6pm and 8:30pm (tickets)

A presentation of the New York Film Festival
Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
Broadway and 65th Street, Manhattan

Subway: #1 local train to 66th Street/Lincoln Center Station
Bus: The M5, M7, M10, M11, M66 and M104 bus lines all stop within one block of Lincoln Center.