|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Eliot Feld and the Shifting Paradigm
| Article
# : |
18629 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1991 |
1,561 Words |
| Author
: |
Doris Hering
Doris Hering is a senior editor of Dance magazine. |
For more than two decades, people have thought of Eliot Feld as the heir apparent to choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Suddenly during his company's recent New York season at the Joyce Theater, I found myself facing the reality that Balanchine has been dead for eight years, and Robbins has ostensibly retired from ballet choreography. Feld is now in his late forties.
Last April when Feld received the Dance Magazine Award, he was obviously feeling the pressure. In his acceptance speech he noted that "we are in a time of paradigm shift--venturing from one paradigm in search of the next, and what emboldens us to restlessness is our need for a new model, and avatar, for our time. We are in a shift between paradigms, as it were. Paradigms are phenomena of timing as well as phenomena of individual genius. We are in a hunting and gathering phase."
Was Feld speaking here for contemporary dance audiences, or for himself as an artist? I suspect the latter, for it would appear that after a choreographic career that began in 1967 and has thus far produced sixty-seven ballets, Feld was indulging in a bit of healthy self-appraisal, even perhaps a little self-justification.
Feld at the outset of his career proved to be amazingly mature artistically. As with Balanchine and Robbins, his first works sprang forth fully formed. Balanchine gave us Apollo at the age of twenty-four; from Robbins we had Fancy Free at twenty-six; and from Feld, Harbinger and At Midnight when he was twenty-four. Balanchine and Robbins may not have exceeded the originality of their initial statements, but they often matched it in more sophisticated ways and with greater structural mastery. As the current season Feld Ballets/New York demonstrates, Feld has never really gone beyond At Midnight nor often matched it. True, he can brilliantly handle thematic complexity, and he is an adroit, sometimes ruthless, manipulator of bone, joint, and sinew. But for these effects he has too often sacrificed the inner and more subtle voice of artistic quest.
Dealing with Loneliness
To return to At Midnight: In this deeply honest utterance, which was revived for the current season, Feld deals with loneliness, perhaps the loneliness of the young artist that he was. The strength of the ballet lies in its universality. We can all identify with it, and yet it is by no means transparent. Set to Gustav Mahler's Rueckert Lieder, it consists of three basic images: a man struggling
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
