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THE YEAR OF THE SERIES AND A TRIPLE ‘SACRE’

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For Los Angeles dance audiences, 1985 was the year of the series. Perhaps influenced by the eclectic format of the Olympic Arts Festival, a number of local arts organizations gathered dissimilar dance and performance-art events under series umbrellas.

Beyond major, continuing series such as “Explorations” and the UCLA “Art of Dance,” 1985 offered the uneven, summer-long “Dance Park” activities at the John Anson Ford Theatre, expanded Asian and Asian-American dance at the Japan America Theatre, genre -smashing studio series at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (“Out of Dance”) and the Wallenboyd (“Angel’s Flight”), “Visions” and “10 L.A. Choreographers” (two downtown series with points of view more sharply honed than the usual something-for-everyone approach), two dance and one intermedia series at the new L.A. Theatre Center--plus the biggest new series of them all: the Festival of India, danced on many local stages and extending through 1986.

Once again, it was impossible to see everything important or noteworthy. Below, then, is a highly personal month-by-month summary of dance in 1985--highlights from one aficionado’s calendar.

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January: Besides umpteen Romeos and Juliets who danced through town, there were a fair number of sacrificial maidens: Five choreographies to Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps” in the nine months from mid-1984. With Bausch and Graham rites still fresh in memory, the ’85 onslaught began early, with Paul Taylor’s Jazz-Age saga followed by the tres primitif Maurice Bejart and cartoon-Slavic Valery Panov versions (and virgins) soon after.

February: Far from Denmark (and from Los Angeles), Ballet West of Salt Lake City revived August Bournonville’s “Abdallah,” a full-length Arabian Nights fantasy not danced since 1858. Toni Lander, Bruce Marks and Flemming Ryberg reconstructed this “lost” classic from choreographic notes in the Copenhagen Royal Library and produced the result with unerring taste and unstinting skill. A triumph for regional ballet.

March: One of the top dance books of 1985, “Tchaikovsky’s Ballets” by Roland John Wiley (Oxford University Press: $39.95), gathered and sifted every imaginable resource for more information on “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker” (scores and choreographies) than has ever appeared in English. Each chapter showed a time-honored truism to be false or revealed anew specific patterns and purposes in classics that we only think we know.

April: Preserving the social comment and gritty characterization that has always distinguished black dance, Blondell Cummings reached new stylistic frontiers in her exciting, innovative “Food for Thought” solos on the “Explorations” series. After she isolated significant gestures (movement “snapshots”), she repeated, alternated and sequenced them in bold rhythmic patterns or divided them into basic motion-components: behavior dissected frame by frame.

May: The Los Angeles Chamber Ballet revealed growing distinction and refinement during a five-part program at the Japan America Theatre. More than any single work, what impressed was the prevailing sense of sensitivity toward ballet as an expressive language, the musicality and deeply intelligent performances that directors Victoria Koenig and Raiford Rogers drew from nearly every member of the company.

June: At the tiny Eilat Gordin Gallery in West Hollywood, Luis Manuel and Mel Kennedy introduced “Hands Off,” a funny, sexy, unfailingly imaginative dance drama that just might be the best new work created locally all year long. Deftly sketched in a pantomime-based movement style, the unpredictable contest of wills between the volatile, unfettered Manuel and the ultraconventional Kim Pistone reached mythic dimensions: Rambo meets Conan-the-Librarian.

July: “Dance Park” achieved a dark glory with an uncompromising Tim Miller/Rudy Perez split bill: confessional performance art (“Buddy Systems”) from Miller, elliptical dance abstractions (“Triangles Red,” “Debut” and “Fall-Out”) from Perez. Both artists powerfully reflected the media-influenced style of desperate hedonism in the City of the Angels through depictions of self-absorption, restless cruising and brief, demeaning relationships.

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August: Tamasaburo Bando and Takao Kataoka of the Grand Kabuki brilliantly embodied the erotic grotesquerie of “Kasane” at UCLA. Early on, this 1823 dance drama seemed to be one of Kabuki’s sentimental love-suicide duets, but it soon developed that these lovers were united as much by crime as passion--and that their fate was to be more horrible than mere death. In the nightmarish possession sequences, Bando was unforgettable: tortured and terrifying.

September: David Palmer served notice in the Joffrey Ballet revival of John Cranko’s “Jeu de Cartes” that a new star has emerged in this ostensibly starless ensemble. As the antic/bravura Joker in this parodistic “poker game in three deals,” Palmer tossed off technical feats effortlessly and capped his already impressive achievements in “Arden Court,” “Love Songs” and “Jamboree” with dancing of ideal freshness, wit and precision.

October: To the Wadsworth Theatre the Festival of India brought a genuine rarity: Krishnattam, a form of ritual dance drama (related to the overpowering Kathakali idiom) seldom seen outside of the Guruvayurappan Temple in Kerala. Ultimately the complex stylization of makeup and movement proved dazzling as pure design and also served to heighten familiar emotions, endowing them with a superhuman grandeur.

November: Gregory Hines revealed remarkable depth and daring in his improvised tap solo for the movie “White Nights.” To find tap as passionate, or as spatially extravagant, you’d have to go back to 1943--to Fred Astaire’s intense “One for My Baby” solo in “The Sky’s the Limit” and the Nicholas Brothers’ virtuosic flying splits down a staircase in “Stormy Weather.” With Hines’ solo, you saw a fusion of the full heat and flash of tap, deftly photographed.

December: Danced ballets are sweet but those un danced are significant. The month should have begun with a performance by the Eliot Feld Ballet at UCLA. However, because of sudden financial difficulties, the company offered UCLA a hard choice: either come up with an extra $35,000 or accept a “stripped down” roster and repertory. UCLA opted to cancel, issuing a statement that Los Angeles deserved better than budget Feld.

This response--and others regarding Bejart casting changes and the venue for Trisha Brown’s upcoming February performances here--represented a welcome change from UCLA’s permissive attitude in 1984 toward the major artistic compromises in campus engagements by Ailey, Graham, Brown, etc. If quality control has again become a priority in Westwood, deck the halls.

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