By Michael H. Margolin
ANN ARBOR – A signature ballet is to a dance company what the Big Mac is to McDonald's: There may be other things on the menu, but this is what they remember you for. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's signature ballet, for example, is "Revelations."
University of Michigan alum Daniel Gwirtzman's reply to the question, "Is 'Encore' your signature ballet?" is a bit shy and a little embarrassed. "Maybe it's not a signature piece," he says, reluctant perhaps to have this innocent entertainment compared to the greats. "But," he adds, "maybe my solo (in "Encore") is; the one I danced at the White House." It is set to the music of Louis Armstrong singing "Basin Street Blues" – The Rosetta Stone of jazz, he calls it.
Gwirtzman, now based in New York, will dance his solo alongside three of the dancers from his eponymously-named company with five students chosen from U-M's dance program in a shortened version of "Encore" at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 3 in the dance department's Betty Pease Studio Theater.
Gwirtzman is teaching this fall at his Ann Arbor alma mater and going back to New York to dance with his company on weekends. So why not fly a few dancers in and put on a show for Michiganians? Therefore, "Encore" – first created this year and performed at the home of New York cutting-edge dance, the Joyce Soho – will have an encore; one of several this year.
"The heart of it is jazz music. Classical jazz – Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dorsey brothers," says Gwirtzman after teaching a dance class on a recent fall day. He is animated and vigorous in talking about his work, eyes darting and widening, energy spilling out of arms and hands.
"The concept of the work is dancers preparing for a performance; it is a window into the studio" – not unlike the one that had unfurled upstairs a few moments before.
What the audience will see in the approximately 60 intermission-less minutes of "Encore" is "very dense, elements of Broadway dance, theatrical" and, Gwirtzman emphasizes, "mainstream."
"It is intentional that people should leave feeling happy – no hidden meanings," Gwirtzman promises. "I want to recognize believable people on stage, capturing what we do all the time."
So, it begins "backstage" with clowning around, then moving into rehearsal with improvisation and random movement until, gradually, the audience begins to see the emergence of a theatrical dance production. From rehearsal clothes to designed costumes, the dance becomes a comment on dancing in 20 sections.
This seems just right coming from a Jewish boy from Rochester, N.Y., whose first dance experiences were Israeli folk dancing at his local temple. This is a form of dance that he calls pedestrian, flat-footed – meaning real and natural movement.
"The virtuosity is created by speed and rhythm," he says. Teaching what he is preaching was something evident in Gwirtzman's recent class: First, he would demonstrate a series of steps in a sequence – no extraordinary steps, nothing showy. Then the students would dance the steps to the music: guttural, bluesy, ethnic and usually twice as fast as his demo. That's when the magic of his choreography emerged – the rhythms of the music and the speed of the steps gave it a new edge and great energy.
That is very much what "Encore" is about: a way of turning steps into energy into dance movement into eye candy into entertainment.
"Encore" repeats this trick before the audience's eyes.
(FOR 'REVIEW BOX')
PREVIEW:
'Encore'
The University of Michigan Department of Dance presents the New York-based Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company in its Michigan premiere performance of "Encore" at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 3 in the Betty Pease Studio Theater, on U-M's central campus. Tickets are $5. For tickets or more information, call 734-763-5461. For information about the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, log on to http://www.gwirtzmandance.org.
