In Search of a Toehold

By LEWIS SEGAL

Jan. 1, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES DANCE CRITIC

At age 58, choreographer Garth Fagan is the new kid on the block: a respected modern dance artist with his own 29-year-old company who, because of dances he created for his first Broadway musical, “The Lion King,” has suddenly reached the media winner’s circle.

Where such notable concert-dance choreographers as Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Eliot Feld, Doug Varone and Lar Lubovitch have failed at high-profile Broadway projects, Fagan reaped a lion’s share of honors for his debut on the Great White Way, including the 1998 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and Astaire Award.

A native of Jamaica, Fagan studied with modern dance royalty--Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Mary Hinkson and Alvin Ailey--along with major teachers from the Caribbean. Before “The Lion King,” his theater-dance experience included directing and choreographing Duke Ellington’s opera “Queenie Pie” at the Kennedy Center in 1986 and choreographing a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1988. He has also created concert works for companies including Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and the Jose Limon Dance Company.

In November, while making plans to restage his “Lion King” dances in Tokyo, he enjoyed twofold popularity and acclaim in New York when his Garth Fagan Dance played an engagement at the Joyce Theater.

“As a modern-dance choreographer, he fits no label,” wrote New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff about “Two Pieces of One: Green,” his newest work, at the Joyce. “But ‘Green’ shows him as the equivalent of a painter who explores the possibility of paint itself. The work has an abstract, geometric edge, but its musical overlay of jazz and a choral selection by a 16th century Spanish composer suggests an experiment in texture with a subliminal message.”

Since dance is reembracing theatricality and storytelling, after a period of abstraction, Fagan seems an ideal artist to discuss working at both ends of the spectrum: comparing the satisfactions of dance-for-dance’s-sake versus the rewards of entering the high-stakes, collaborative world of theater dance.

Question: Did you set yourself any specific goals for “The Lion King”?

Answer: I did say I wanted real concert dance in the show. You know how many Broadway shows you see and it’s the same t-and-a, smile-smile, shake-shake. Only the music and the costumes change. I wanted a real changeability in the dances themselves, so when you see the hyena dance, it’s hip-hop: very contemporary, very urban and very frightening. And then when you see the lioness dance, it’s ethereal and imaginative.

Q: What was the most frustrating thing about the working experience?

A: When my dances were edited--when I was told that they were getting in the way of the story, or that the audience got it already and to hell with what I wanted to develop.

As a choreographer, I take movement invention and the development of my phrases very seriously; I just delight in that aspect. But you don’t have much time when you have what is called a dance break in the middle of a song, and this is traditional on Broadway.

The lioness’ dance is the first time we had a clear space to do dancing in the show. But because of the story and [timing], it had to be shortened. It was a balance thing. And Julie [Taymor, the director] was absolutely right--the dance couldn’t be longer than the song. But it was painful. Because some of the things I wanted to say about the lioness never got said.

Q: So what’s the secret of working under those conditions?

A: Being prepared with alternatives, so when you hear that this dance isn’t working, you can come up with an alternative that can take into consideration the director’s or the producer’s needs but still not ruin your artistry. It’s a very tricky situation. You have to roll with the punches. You change one thing, and then it affects five other things and you have to change them too.

Q: Any other lessons learned?

A: One was how to use space--space that you don’t have. Because the sets dictate that you have maybe only 4 feet of depth and 10 feet of width and you have to put a dance in there.

It’s like that little sendup of Victorian ballet in the Matthew Bourne “Swan Lake.” That was wonderful because there was no space for it on the set, but he made it happen.

It’s very different from concert dance. After “The Lion King,” when I went back to the Joyce and choreographed “Two Pieces of One: Green” on my company, one of the reasons it was so successful is that I was so happy to have a clear stage to dance on. And also that I could follow my fancies and develop my phrases and my patterns and all the things that are valuable to choreographers. Just to look at the dancers’ bodies without elaborate costumes on them--that was like a celebration.

Q: You mentioned the Matthew Bourne “Swan Lake.” Did you like it? And what do you think about the emphasis on theater that seems to be so prevalent now in dance?

A: I was very impressed with [“Swan Lake”], the swans particularly. But I hope all this emphasis on theater and stories is not the wave of the future. I hope it’s just to get through a bad time. Because so much of it is so simplistic as far as dance is concerned. Shows like “Lion King” and “Bring In ‘Da Noise” have brought a much younger audience into the theater. So that’s been good, and if the others are also expanding audiences, good for them.

But “Riverdance” is not all there is to know about Irish dance, the subtleties of Irish dance. Not nearly. I’m hoping that we can get through this kind of work to something of more depth and breadth

Q: How bad a time for dance is it right now?

A: One of the worst we’ve ever known. Its just impossible to have a dance company now. Funding from the National Endowment for the Arts has been cut to smithereens and donors from the corporate world are not giving big money to dance anymore--they’re giving it to social causes. It shouldn’t be an either/or kind of thing: All of the society’s ills have to be dealt with. But the bottom line is that dance tickets cannot pay for dancers’ salaries and everything else.

We sold out at the Joyce for two weeks--the audiences and reviews couldn’t have been better. But by the time you add up transportation costs and hotel bills, there’s nothing left: You end up with a deficit.

Now, Broadway has a tradition of charging more for tickets, maybe because of the sets and the orchestra and all of that. But for modern dance concerts, you don’t make any money at the box office. You need subsidy, and the subsidies are drying up.

Q: Do you see a way out?

A: I think we’ve neglected the dire need for educating kids in the arts in elementary schools--kindergarten through high school. Because that’s one reason why we’re getting these immoral and amoral kids who can murder each other or kill babies in bathrooms or just do horrendous things. For those kids, there’s no poetry to escape to, no books to escape to, no vision of [Natalia] Makarova doing “Swan Lake” that can come back to them.

As a culture we simply have to make more demands for representation of our arts. And modern dance is America: We wrote that book, we have the Grahams and the [Merce] Cunninghams and the Limons and the Aileys. Why aren’t we celebrating them more?

People are never going to know about dance until they see it and are taught what to look for: what movement invention is, what a phrase is. What is lyrical. What is contrapuntal. And who’s teaching them anymore? Even when we do concert tours now, presenters can’t afford [educational] residencies, so kids aren’t exposed to dance. And that’s a tragedy.

I think what dance can do for a society is invaluable. If somebody who is in a negative spiritual state can get away from it for some time and be uplifted by a dance concert, it’s just amazing what can happen.

Through your power and mine, we’ve got to get the Bill Gateses in the world to sink some money into arts education. There’s a lot of big money sitting around in America doing nothing. And education of a future generation is imperative.

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Crossroads

The daily Calendar section will continue through Jan. 7 its series of interviews, conducted by Times critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment.

MONDAY

Movies: Steven Spielberg

TODAY

Classical music: MaryAnn Bonino

WEDNESDAY

Television: Jeff Greenfield

THURSDAY

Jazz: Tommy LiPuma

TODAY

Dance: Garth Fagan

SATURDAY

Restaurants: Nobu Matsuhisa