TUDOR’S SHRINKING LEGACY

The Antony Tudor era in American ballet ended long before Tudor’s death a week ago at age 79. True, American Ballet Theatre periodically revives a handful of his works but their original impetus has been progressively softened and blurred. We glimpse their innovations but all too often their greatness seems to belong solely to history.

The supposed decline of dance-drama isn’t the issue here but rather the company’s increasing inability to render Tudor’s highly specific movement language eloquently or even lucidly. So as we mourn Tudor’s passing, we need also to mourn the deterioration of his legacy. In ballet sometimes, vita longa, ars brevis .

As critic Edwin Denby wrote in an analysis of Tudor’s “Jardin aux Lilas” and “Pillar of Fire” 44 years ago, “from the outset, Tudor has emphasized the pantomime aspects of the dance. He begins with easily recognizable movements, gestures of greeting, of pushing back a strand of hair, of fiddling with clothes, of averting the glance, of walking or standing not as in a ballet but as in daily life.

“One’s attention is caught by these gestures because they at once specify the characters of a story, the situation, the psychological tension. They are expertly stylized to fit the music and to form sequences of motion that please the eye. They combine smoothly with dance steps, and we unconsciously expect from the more complex dance figures that follow the same sort of narrative meaning, the pantomime exposition of story we have begun to look for.”

This emphasis on narrative gesture is not merely a hallmark of Tudor style, it is the key to character psychology and social context in his work. When, for instance, Caroline says goodby to her party guests in “Jardin aux Lilas,” the way she extends her hand must convey her feelings about each one.

But what contemporary American dancer is trained or rehearsed to this degree of acuity? The most we get these days from ABT is usually generalized, inarticulate waving, something like Queen Victoria acknowledging the public from her balcony.

Although Tudor will be forever identified with the term “psychological ballet,” his greatest works are far more complex than mere behavioral studies. For instance, Lincoln Kirstein has written about the overlapping priorities of “Jardin aux Lilas,” again citing Tudor’s mastery of “mood, character and dramatic climax, within the rich tradition of English pantomime”:

“On the first level, the ballet is a miniature tragedy of love denied; on a second, psychological recovery of a past in the present; on a third, a picture of manners in a particular society in history.”

It is this last achievement of Tudor’s that may be the most undervalued or misunderstood. Whether they focus on psychological motivation or not, Tudor’s major works meticulously explore group dynamics and in his most celebrated dance-dramas the individual’s relationship to society is likely to be the central issue.

A Tudor milieu can be minutely depicted (the demi-monde of “Offenbach in the Underworld”) or merely sketched (the ballroom world of “Dim Lustre”) but it conditions the emotions and behavior of the leading characters.

In “Pillar of Fire,” Hagar’s longing for her humdrum gentleman caller isn’t made a private or domestic matter. No, we see her yearning to join those troops of look-alike Lovers-in-Experience lyrically swooping across the stage. She’s energized by social example. And, at the very end of the ballet, she gets her wish and suddenly becomes just as anonymous as they are, absorbed (along with her suitor) into the network of corps patterns.

In “The Leaves are Fading,” the leading roles are essentially projections of the group--part of the pattern enlarged--and the only dramatic action is a young woman’s definitive acceptance of her feelings for her partner. Significantly, her decision comes an instant after she sees an older woman wandering alone.

Individuals suffer in Tudor ballets, but groups endure--even the stricken community in “Dark Elegies” that must collectively survive the death of its children. It was no coincidence that Tudor’s life ended at the First Zen Institute of America. Buddhism progressively shaped his outlook and his output, sometimes explicitly (“Shadowplay”), elsewhere indirectly. And even the early masterpieces are not concerned with the depiction and resolution of psychological problems as much as characters finding their place in the scheme of things.

In “La Gloire,” Tudor depicted the decline of a classical actress and her eventual fusion with a role, the dying character and dying artist expiring as one. It was a more comforting vision than the one now confronting those who want to see Tudor’s art restored to its full glory. Is there any reason to expect greater ABT commitment to his ballets, and more quality control of the revivals, in the future?

Not long ago, Ballet Theatre artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov called Tudor “the conscience of our company,” an ironic tribute indeed when reprinted in the obituaries. Certainly the death of conscience is always worth mourning but what happens afterwards can be even sadder.