Garth Fagan Dance

(Nazareth College Arts Center, 5 December 2009)

In a good dance number, music is in the mind of the viewer, certainly not conspicuously on the mind of the dancer. Music is what a dancer's mood evokes, not what shocks the dancer into his next move. It is this subordination of music to characters that makes a jazz band engaging to watch, and it is the failure to subordinate that makes watching a symphony orchestra dull unless one's gaze is rested on the conductor.

Garth Fagan's dancers stretch, interpret music, or communicate with an entity that delights in broken lines and abrupt movements, but they communicate reluctantly with each other. When they do communicate with each other, they are at their best, as in "Translation Transition." There, music is simple and repetitive enough not to dominate the understated choreography; the characters emerge.

Mr Fagan's sense of timing and visual composition is precise, even cinematic. It should be employed to tell the dancers' story, not the composer's.