Beckanne Sisk and Fabrice Calmels in Light Rain, photo by Siggul:Visual Arts Masters.

When two dancers performed an excerpt of Arpino’s Light Rain (1981) at the Youth American Grand Prix gala last week, I was happy to see it again. I was grooving on the rhythm—there’s a really strong hold after the first percussive beat—and the sexy, sinuous movement. I love the way, after many repetitions of that staccato rhythm, the music starts swirling and so does the choreography. It was performed with tantalizing boldness by Beckanne Sisk of Ballet West and Fabrice Calmels of the Joffrey Ballet.

At intermission, I ran into a friend who said she found the duet over-the-top raunchy. “Too many hip rolls, and that last position is—” she used a word that meant it did not belong in a theater. The New York Times review pretty much echoed her reaction.

Valerie Robin and Fabrice Calmels of the Joffrey in Light Rain, photo by Herbert Migdoll

That last position of Light Rain’s central duet is, to me, no more suggestive than some of the moments in Balanchine’s Bugaku or Kylián’s Petite Mort. Don’t most 20th-century pas de deux have an erotic component anyway? I started thinking about why something strikes one person as tasteless and not another. There are certainly times when I felt a piece was tasteless, for instance I tend to react that way to Boris Eifman’s work though I know the Russians adore it. So why did I not feel it with Light Rain and should I feel guilty for enjoying it? Does perceiving taste or tastelessness have to do with time and cultural expectations?

During the 1980s Light Rain was a big hit for the Joffrey Ballet. It showcased the super articulation of the dancers—not just in arms and legs, but in the pelvis too. It had a brazenness that was part of what marked the Joffrey as unique. With pieces like Arpino’s Sea Shadow (1962) and Trinity (1970) and Robert Joffrey’s Astarte (1967), the Joffrey was the sexy ballet company. (Of course, it was also the historic ballet company, what with its major reconstructions of Nijinsky’ Rite of Spring, Massine’s Parade, Jooss’ Green Table, and more.) Light Rain was well matched with the trippy music (by Douglas Adamz and Russ Gauthier) and well crafted in each of its sections. Audiences loved it—just as they did last week at the YAGP gala.

Perhaps when the Light Rain duet is taken out of context of the Joffrey rep, it’s more susceptible to charges of tastelessness. And maybe we’re not used to seeing such pieces at the Koch Theater, which after all is the house of Apollo (i.e. Balanchine). But then again, sometimes it’s satisfying to see a ballet that blithely crosses over from Apollonian to Dionysian territory.

The Joffrey Ballet in Light Rain, photo by Herbert Migdoll

I am honored to conduct the one public interview that the Bolshoi’s artistic director is giving while he’s in NYC. In Sergei Filin’s first trip to the U.S. since the horrific acid attack that nearly blinded him, he is here is to serve on the jury of Youth America Grand Prix, with which he’s had a long relationship. My talk with him will be a pre-performance event Friday, April 11, on the Promenade of the Koch Theater open to all who have tickets to the 15th-anniversary gala that same night.

Sergei Filin in Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, 1990s, photo by Damir Yusupov @Balanchine Trust. Photo of Filin on homepage was taken by me in 2012.

Looking back at my interview with him a few months before that attack, it seems that things were going well, though he knew some dancers were unhappy. But no one could have anticipated the savagery of a hit-man throwing acid in Filin’s face.

In the intrigue that followed, there was a lot of reshuffling at the Bolshoi. During Filin’s medical leave, a “committee” was put in charge, which raised certain questions. Both the general Bolshoi director, Anatoly Iksanov, and notoriously outspoken dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze lost their jobs. (Tsiskaridze has taken over as director of the hallowed Vaganova Ballet Academy.) The dancer accused of plotting the attack, Pavel Dmitrichenko, was sentenced to six years of hard labor, later decreased to five and a half.

Things have quieted down a bit, and now we can look forward to the Bolshoi returning to NYC in July.

So, for all those who have tickets to the final YAGP gala—and it will be a blowout, star studded gala—I hope to see you there. For more info on the gala and to buy tickets, click here.

After I posted my Monday Dance Magazine blog about  the amazing Asian women who have danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company, I received a message informing me about the other gender. David Hochoy, longtime director of Dance Kaleidoscope, Indiana’s premiere contemporary dance company, told me of the Asian men who danced for Martha: Henry Yu in the mid-70s, Young-Ha Yu in the late 80s, and himself, from 1980 to 89. It was Hochoy’s specialty to impersonate Martha at the company’s annual “Graham Follies” gathering—more on that later.

Hochoy in El Penitente, 1980s, photo by Martha Swope

Hochoy also filled me in on the topic of her liking to be mistaken for an Asian, which I had only heard about second-hand. Here is what he said:

“I’ll tell you a story that she told me one afternoon in her apartment. She was young and on tour with the Follies. She was in Atlanta and walked into a Chinese restaurant. The waiter, who was Chinese, said to her ‘You Chinee!’ Martha shook her head. ‘Yes, you Chinee!’ the waiter insisted, and brought her special food. Martha delighted in being taken for Asian. Which is not surprising because at Denishawn they worshipped the Orient and all things Asian. I think she thought of herself as Asian.”

And of course, there was the Asian man Isamu Noguchi, whose spare set designs did so much to complete her vision. Actually performing with those austere works of sculpture, though, was a different story. Artistic director Janet Eilber has written a humorous article revealing that dancing on them was “teeth-grindingly, bone-achingly uncomfortable.”

David Hochoy as Martha, Halloween, 1988, photos courtesy Hochoy

Someday, I hope to see David Hochoy do his rumored-to-be-wicked Martha impersonation. In this photo from Halloween 1988, it looks like Martha finally got to be Asian.