Garth Fagan: Grace in Space

Choreographer Garth Fagan doesn’t mind being called a purist. A confirmed formalist, Fagan is committed to pushing the spatial possibilities of his art forward. Fagan makes dances as serenely spacious as formal gardens. His lean, towering dancers, drawing in space with precise geometry, have the sculptural force and presence of totems.

Jamaican-born Fagan has been making abstract dances with a hint of the voluptuous shapes of his Afro-Caribbean artistic roots for more than 18 years. His Bucket Dance Company, based in Rochester, N.Y., has been touring internationally for the last few years and will appear in Royce Hall, UCLA, Friday and Saturday.

“I’m glad everybody is saying that my work is formal,” Fagan comments. “Because there are biases in America, that especially if you’re a choreographer who happens to be black, you don’t understand formal shapes. Why don’t I tell narrative tales and why don’t I entertain the public with ‘Bubbling Brown Sugar No. 207’?

“Use of space and movement invention,” Fagan says with conviction, “redefining space and form . . . that’s what I want to do. That’s my main thing. Great dances have been made; masterpieces exist. But if we don’t push the art form forward, it’s going to die.

“I got so bored with everybody facing center stage and doing whatever they have to do and then splitting. Even in the piece I did for Dance Theatre of Harlem on point (‘Footprints Dressed in Red’), I used space radically. That drove some of the ballet people crazy.”

Fagan has succeeded in fusing a linear sharpness (“the upper extremities really can go”) with what he likes to call “that volume, that enveloping space.”

In “Landscape for Ten” (on the UCLA program) Fagan has created a deep ambient stage space. Couples locked and tangled together in two-in-one shapes, their faceted body planes iridescent in blue, are studded like jewels in the shadowy space. Flying limbs dart like arrows or vectors. The beehive-like complexity of the overall design reveals a painter’s concern with structure.

“We use zoning in rehearsals,” Fagan explains. “And modern painting does that. I used to paint and in hindsight I realize that it’s some of my painting concerns I’m putting on a larger live canvas. I spend hours in the studio getting the spacing right.”

“And sculptural shapes, amen. ‘Landscape for Ten,’ that’s all it is--one big outrageous orgy of sculptural shapes.”

The Bucket dancers are known for the concentrated energy and physical conviction they bring to the movement. High carriages and extensions, softened undulating hips and rooted placement are hallmarks of the Fagan technique and training.

“The plantedness, the rootedness, is important,” he explains. “That’s the base. All the filigree that happens comes out of that. It’s very natural, and that I got from Africa. African dancers dance for themselves first, and then, if you care to look, fine.

“The speed I took from ballet. Because most modern dancers weren’t into enough speed for me. It’s not just speed to dazzle. It’s not slick speed. That’s empty because you can’t tell where it comes from.”

Fagan likes to think of his dance idiom as “a new branch of the family tree. It’s contemporary modern dance where you still get that weightedness. Where you still get that sense of inner expression that Graham and Humphrey and Limon pioneered. But you have some of the contemporary abstraction that Merce (Cunningham) has in his work. So I have gleaned a lot . . . Alvin (Ailey) taught me theatrical presentation, and Paul Taylor is just heaven.”

Elaborating on his blend of classical modern and non-Western movement sources, Fagan says: “It’s not reinventing the form, it’s just pushing it forward. And I feel that some of the textures and rhythms and spiritual point of view that’s so rampant in African and Afro-Caribbean dance has not been used in this fashion.”

The UCLA program will include West Coast premieres of “Landscape for Ten,” “Time After Before Place” and “Passion Distanced,” a solo by this year’s Bessie Award winner, Norwood Pennewell.

“ ‘Landscape for Ten’ is the AIDS one,” says Fagan. “It’s not just about AIDS, though--it’s about reaffirming life. Reaffirming longstanding relationships. About having you question yourself about people’s relationships by looking at your relationships. Because I really think that if people valued their relationships with their wives or husbands, they would understand why someone who was a homosexual or lesbian would value their relationship.

“ ‘Passion Distanced’ is a real heady, thinking man’s piece. And if you really get into it and allow it, it makes you ask yourself some hard questions about your passions.

“ ‘Time After Before Place’ is a new one to the wonderful score by Art Ensemble of Chicago. And in that one I really have a great time exploring space and time. Time through Western eyes and ears, time through Third World eyes and ears--an entirely different time.”