From the African-American tradition to neoclassical abstractions indebted to Balanchine, from choreography intended as a means to reflect on society to dance as virtuosity of form: Donald Byrd, a black choreographer with important collaborations with Karole Armitage, Twyla Tharp, Peter Sellars and Bob Wilson, is an artist who does not allow himself to be caged in formulas and styles that are too rigid. His shows – more than eighty from 1978 to today – are varied both in terms of themes and in the tone of technical experimentation. Over the course of almost twenty years of his career, Byrd has signed choreographies for numerous American and European companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founding Donald Byrd/The Group in Los Angeles in 1978, which then moved to New York in 1983. The authoritative New York Times has compared Byrd to Balanchine more than once and in fact Byrd seems to have drawn inspiration from the great Russian master on several occasions. To then deconstruct its luminous harmonies in the light of contemporary conflict. Dynamic, trained in sequences in which academic classicism is broken by movements of the arms, head and torso that make their accents changeable, the ten dancers of Donald Byrd/The Group have received acclaim from national and international critics, as their extensive tours prove.
Among the titles signed by Byrd in the 90s there is a curious African-American version of the classic Christmas ballet “The Nutcracker”, renamed “The Harlem Nutcracker” and sewn on the reworking of the original music by Tchaikovsky by Duke Ellington. Attentive to the racial issues of his country, Byrd dedicated a successful work to the subject in 1991, “The Minstrel Show”, winner the following year of the prestigious Bessie Award. It is a satire on the stereotypes of racism of the twentieth century, danced with irony and pleasant eccentric taste. In the 1994/1995 season, Byrd dedicated “The Beast: The Domestic Violence Project” to domestic violence, a full-night work set to music by Mio Morales.
In Oriente Occidente, the American artist presents excerpts from three of his latest and most important productions: “Bristle,” built on Ravel’s “La Valse,” is by Mio Morales. A full-night show with complex developments, “Bristle” revolves around the struggle between the sexes, investigated, act after act, according to different facets. Thus, while in the first act the contrast between man and woman is played out in an aggressive dance, especially from a formal point of view, in the second act, set to Ravel’s music, the starting theme opens up to a more explicit narrative that, despite the romantic tone of the musical choice, does not allow sentimental concessions. In the final act, there are only four dancers left: they finally accept the partnership, arousing a feeling of hope in the audience. “Drastic Cult’s” is instead a more abstract ballet, whose first section has however many analogies with the beginning of “Bristle”. Moreover, also in “Bristle”, what speaks first and foremost is the technical and formal expertise of the dancers. Finally “Life Situation”. Ballet created in ’94 is a sort of laboratory on the movement style of one of the greatest classics of the academic tradition: “Giselle”.
