DANCE REVIEW : Eurythmeum Stuttgart’s Classical Exercises

It was a sight to behold:

The noble, statuesque figures swathed in ankle-length tunics with flowing silk scarfs draped over their arms looked nothing like dancers we know today. They wore little or no makeup. The women’s hair, gently pinned back, even predated the small sleek chignons emblematic of ‘40s modern dance.

And when--under plain, bright lights Tuesday at the Wadsworth Theater--members of the Eurythmeum Stuttgart began to move, they resembled a dancing ode to a Grecian urn, antiquity and classicism extolled.

Seldom, in these days of the global village, does an art form manage to stay preserved against instantly conveyed happenings, modes and fads. But the Stuttgarters, for better or worse, are parochial as an institution. They consciously resist outside influences. Their obeisance is to the metaphysics of movement and so an aura of ritual obtains.

The steps are nothing elaborate--they consist of walking and running--and the choreographic patterns, courtesy of 82-year-old director Else Klink, could pass for slightly ordered free form. But the arms and hands mirror the music, much as do an orchestra conductor’s. Trilled notes, for example, produce fingers aflutter in the air.

Musical mood is the key, of course: A largo signals solemnity, the lights dim and the costumes become dark shrouds. An allegro inspires quick movement and brightness.

Yet for all its literalism one can admire the plastique and eloquence that the best of these eurythmists can offer. Some, among the 16 touring members, are better than others and not all conform to established standards regarding technique, age and body proportions.

To appreciate these obsolete pioneers over their two-and-a-half-hour program, however, requires a special sensibility. Partly it depends on how long one can be fascinated by something so simplistic. And if one wanted to draw the toughest comparison it would be to “interpretive” dancing--the sort of thing children might naturally do on hearing music.

In fact, several little girls in the sparse audience (a strictly non-dance crowd) got the point: They waved their arms about in imitation of the on-stage scene.

Most engaging, although over-long, was the “Peer Gynt” entry. Because it employed two exceptionally skilled narrators, Annika Jaensch and Martin Porteous, who could convincingly portray all the characters, interest flagged only somewhat.

But the pattern of mime visualizing spoken text (Ibsen) and movement representing music (Grieg)--provided by pianists Julian Clarke and Nancy Ruczynski, cellist Lucas Fels--bogged down in routine alternation. And in an unfortunate bit of casting Benedikt Zweifel, as Peer, looked twice the age of Christa Maria Schmidt, his mother.

After intermission came Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata in D minor and here any merit the Stuttgarters might have broke down--especially for those who do not care to see every note or phrase physicalized by movement. Lacking real choreographic ideas, the exercise became an intrusion on the music.

The next items, billed as “Light Pieces For Luck and Laughter,” took the dancers out of their Grecian tunics and consisted in an assortment of clowns, ducks and bumblebees--fare more appropriate for a nursery school than an adult audience. The program ended, and not a moment too soon, with a Brahms Hungarian Dance.