*Ballet-Tanz*

Mindy Aloff:

*Henning Rübsam - A German lexicon of classical dance*
Sensedance in New York

Review, December 2004

The choreographer Henning Rübsam, a native of Germany, who taught dance in Berlin this fall, at Marameo Studios, has spent much of his career based in the United States. He began to choreograph in 1984 and has produced some 40 dances, some of which have featured the ballerina Eva Evdokimova, who has collaborated with him regularly. Since 1992, his company, Sensedance, has given annual season's of Rübsam's work in New York. A graduate of The Juilliard School, to which he transferred from the Hamburg Opera Ballet School, he was a member of Alwin Nikolais/Murray Louis Dance and has toured internationally with the José Limón Dance Company and Duncan Macfarland's DanceArtCompany. He has participated in the Nikolais Legacy Project; has appeared with choreographers Sue Bernhard, David Rousseve, Penny Hutchinson, Jody Sperling, and the fellow Nikolais-company veteran Beverly Blossom; and is the recipient of several awards for his choreography.

This fall, Sensedance - whose personnel change frequently - is performing several times at different venues in Manhattan. At the Baruch Performing Arts Center, the dancers comprised both individuals who had worked with Rübsam previously (Michael Pendell, Samuel Lee Roberts, Kathryn Sydell, and Shizu Yasuda) and first-timers Melissa Morrissey, Akua Parker, Sonny Robinson, and Ramon Thielen - all of whom have danced for the now disbanded, and much missed Dance Theatre of Harlem. They are dancers of quality - Morrissey is a classical stylist of considerable distinction - and wonderful performers.

Of the six dances on the program, four were premières. The evening was ambitious in other respects as well. Musically, it was a pleasure: a chamber suite to Woody Herman ("Herman Sherman"), a Duncanesque solo to Schubert ("Frühlingsglaube:" made for Eva Evdokimova and danced here by the choreographer himself), a delightful suite for eight dancers to numbers from the late 1930's and early 40's recorded by the peerless jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt ("Django"), and two works featuring scores by the young composer Ricardo Llorca {b. 1962} ("Chorale," performed live by pianist Terrence Wilson, and "Quartet"). Llorca's music - percolating, tonal, tutored in fugal procedures - isn't always to my taste; however, the score for "Quartet" had a pulse that was very useful for dancing and also formal interest, which Rübsam mirrored with considerable charm, playing on asymmetry and off-balance partnering. Although "Django" - whose sections were both more gestural and succesful in their choreographic wit - was the evening's main event, "Quartet" contained some fascinating material.

And Rübsam does construct real ballets, with vocabulary drawn from the classical lexicon, with the dancers passing through the five positions, and with the ladies on point. Indeed, the most political statement of the night was a pas de deux called "Petit Pas," whose "score" consisted of concrete sound interspersed with swatches of speech extracted from such sources as Neil Armstrong's moonwalk. Performed by Samuel Roberts and Shizu Yasuda, the choreography included some scary acrobatic partnering, too.

However, it turned out to be a oneliner, a utopian proposal about social equality, concluding with a quotation from an address by Gloria Steinem: "We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism." The idea is most appealing, yet even the imposition of an appealing idea on a dance makes me, for one, uncomfortable.