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Forces of Nature: Lightning, Water, Music and Movement
A lighthouse guides a ship to safety. A lightning rod diverts a bolt from a structure by providing a direct path to the ground. Still, the opening images of “Lighthouse/Lightning Rod,” a new work by the choreographer Garth Fagan, with loose, exuberant music by the jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, hint at danger as much as at security. Dancers, wearing aquatically themed purples and blues, move spontaneously, as if caught in a riptide: with little warning, they change direction, hopping forward on one leg while taking freestyle strokes in the air with a single arm or collapsing and dangling their fingers toward the floor. Without being too heavy-handed, Mr. Fagan shows that the waters surrounding his “Lighthouse,” as the first section is named, are anything but tranquil.
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Dance Review: Fagan collaboration with Marsalis debuts with fanfare
Garth Fagan and Wynton Marsalis joined forces for their second collaboration, premiering a new work and revitalizing excerpts from a famed repertory piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Thursday night to a packed audience that included Brooklyn Nets players and composer Philip Glass.
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The concert celebrated a number of milestones: BAM’s 150th anniversary year, its Next Wave Festival’s 30th anniversary and the end of Garth Fagan Dance’s 40th anniverary celebration. The company will bring the concert to Rochester from Nov. 27 to Dec. 2 at Nazareth College Arts Center (although the Wynton Marsalis Septet’s music will be a recording). -
The Return of the Broadway Boogie-Woogie
THE choreographer Garth Fagan and Wynton Marsalis, the co-founder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, go way back. They met in the 1980’s when Mr. Fagan, a jazz aficionado, took his dancers to New York clubs to hear Mr. Marsalis play. “I knew we could learn from him,” Mr. Fagan said in a recent conference call with Mr. Marsalis. “I sensed we saw things the same way.” Eventually he invited Mr. Marsalis to a rehearsal at the company’s headquarters in Rochester.
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Trumpeting a Marsalis Ballet
When the Wynton Marsalis Septet played Wolf Trap two years ago, it introduced a 40-minute piece of music called “Blue Interlude” that finally emerged this year as the centerpiece of the group’s brilliant new album. Keep reading »