The Stephen Petronio Company is ending its “confounding” (as Petronio himself puts it) 40-year run with its final performances this week at Jacob’s Pillow. Although this concert was so much more, simply put, if you love watching extremely strong dancers dancing, get tickets and go!
Perhaps, as a reviewer, I might be a bit hesitant to write this review, after reading in the program notes that one reason he was ending his company was that Petronio was “exhausted by … the neocolonial-minded critics who passed sensationalized opinions like it was their divine right to judge [his] artistic life.” However, maybe I get a pass, because—to inject a personal note—back in 1977 or thereabouts, when I was going to UMass Amherst, I actually did some contact improvisation with Petronio when he was at Hampshire College. He would not remember me though. So now, almost 50 years later, we come around (I would not be foolish enough to say “full-circle” given Petronio’s thoughts in this regard) and this writer gets his neocolonial moment!
Petronio’s dance pedigree is considerable. He was the first male dancer in The Trisha Brown Dance Company, a ground-breaking American modern dance company, and he danced with the company for seven years. He is also a serious thinker, someone who appreciates the past and looks to the future, and, critically, someone who takes action. Petronio initiated “Bloodlines,” a project to honor the vast lineage of American postmodern choreographers, by having the work of some of those seminal choreographers set on his company. “Bloodlines” also had a future component, wherein Petronio commissioned work from budding new choreographers, helping connect those new choreographers to the greats from the past, and to the present. In 2017, Petronio also founded the Petronio Residency Center, a facility which, while it was open (it has since closed), was designed to nurture and support movement-based artists in their creative process.
It is fitting that Petronio worked, as noted above, to be a practical, executive link between the past and the future of postmodern dance because, viewing the selections of his choreography spanning 34 years being presented at the Pillow this week, he himself is also clearly one of the important creative and artistic links in that chain as well. Petronio’s choreography is eclectic. He unabashedly takes from everyone who came before him. You can see West African dance in all the second position plies; classical ballet in the precision of the turned-out leg extensions, arms, and some of the jumps; Trisha Brown in the looseness, quirkiness, and unexpected changes of direction; Judson Dance Theater in the mundane, pedestrian movement (although admittedly there was little of this in the work!); Merce Cunningham in the way shapes are put together and the phrasing; “Drastic-Classicism” by Karole Armitage (Petronio’s contemporary) in the dynamics and some of the visual sensibility, to name just a few of his apparent influences.
Petronio synthesizes movement both intellectually and organically, which is hard to do, such that the result is exhilarating to watch. His choreography often unfolds in short bursts of phrasing, a two-second phrase flowing immediately into another two-second phrase. Except for the partnering, which is inventive and intricate, the choreography has a very pleasing kind of two-dimensionality to it. And Petronio often has the impetus for a movement, often a turn, come naturally from the windup of a leg or a body. When his shrewd choices of music and costuming, together with the superb lighting designs by Petronio’s longtime lighting collaborator Ken Tabachnick, are added, one is presented with Petronio’s fully realized and stylish vision.
Of course, most critical to bringing this vision to an audience are the dancers, and Petronio’s company is first-rate. These are robust, bold dancers who are utterly unapologetic about their physicality and their technical skills. But, importantly, they are not so flashy. These days, I find that when dancers are intentionally showing their bodies while dancing, there is often hollow posturing attached. There was none of that with Petronio’s dancers, even when they were wearing revealing costumes. These dancers were properly matter-of-fact about their formidable presence.
In “American Landscapes,” a Petronio piece from 2019, the “downside” of having a company of mesmerizing dancers (there is no downside!) was evident. The work included projections, mostly in the form of photographs, on the back wall during the piece. At any given moment, therefore, audience members kind of had to choose what to look at, the projections or the dancers, if only for short moments. For this viewer, it was no contest: The projections, even though they seemed striking and potent, lost every time, as I could not take my eyes off the dancers. And Tabachnick framed the dancers so beautifully in this piece, it was incredibly easy to keep your eyes on them.
The evening included an autobiographical solo for Petronio, which had him speaking directly to the audience about his hopes, his dreams, and his thoughts and feelings—political and otherwise—related to the past 40-plus years of his life as a human being, a dancer, and a creative artist. This piece could have been self-indulgent, but it wasn’t, because Petronio knew exactly how to walk the fine line between being just a tiny bit self-absorbed and being completely self-effacing, with a sprinkling of umbrage thrown in for good measure. It was moving.
The evening also included Yvonne Rainer’s “Chair-Pillow” from 1969, which helped to tie the entire evening up in a very nice historical ribbon.
The swan song for the Stephen Petronio Company at Jacob’s Pillow features outstanding dancers moving to beautiful music; it is educational; it is poignant and bittersweet; and it is a little challenging politically. In short, it is powerful, exceptional, one-of-a-kind entertainment very much worth seeing. Go to the Jacob’s Pillow website for a schedule of the Petronio performances, as well as listings of all the performances and activities at the Pillow this summer.
