Turning Words into Motion

By Martha Duffy

GOING TO THE DANCE by Arlene Croce, Knopf; 427pages; $20

In her introduction to this new collection of dance commentary, Arlene Croce writes that she has developed a repertory as a critic "concentrating on certain recurrent themes, much as dancers do when given the same roles season after season." Going to the Dance shows that formidable critical repertory. Croce has natural authority and a succinct, pungent style. She stands for musicality and clarity in choreography, artistry and daring onstage. The pleasure in reading these pieces, which were first printed in The New Yorker, is in the variety of performers she finds who embody her standards. They may be hoofers or acrobats or even movie actors. About the very best-- George Balanchine, Suzanne Farrell, Mikhail Baryshnikov-- she can write truly rhapsodic prose, an act of daring in itself. About the pretentious, the emptily theatrical or the slipshod, she can be funny or downright outraged.

Croce's condemnations are rigorous and vivid. Of the late modernist Doris Humphrey she writes: "Humphrey was a structuralist who could reduce a Bach concerto to a nest of mixing bowls; the bowls were brown." Of the immensely popular work of the Netherlands Dance Theater's Jiri Kylian: "A favorite form of pas de trois is the woman pulled and dragged on a steeplechase course between two men. It stands for rape, for exaltation, for fun."

There are other figures with whom she shows a sort of didactic impatience. Her pan of Twyla Tharp's Broadway effort, When We Were Very Young, is clearly done regretfully, but the conclusion is inevitable: the show, she says, "isn't a musical, it isn't a dansical. Like so many shows that are being produced today, it's a booksical."

Jerome Robbins is another choreographer about whom she has mixed feelings. In general the JL format of Going to the Dance--relatively brief, tightly focused pieces on specific works or companies-- is adequate, but Robbins trails through the book like a wraith. One gets only pieces of a critique: that his masterpieces are Afternoon of a Faun and Dances at a Gathering, that he is often too clever by half, that he is good at finding the moves that enhance young dancers. One finishes the book feeling the need of a real assessment of Robbins partly because he draws such strong, quirky reactions from her.

Croce, 48, has dominated American dance criticism since she founded Ballet Review in 1965. Before that, she had written film criticism for the National Review, and a lively erudition about movies runs through her book. She is also an acute observer of dance audiences, their gusty enthusiasms and fads. Because collecting performances is addictive, all dance fans, however august, have a little of the groupie in them, and Croce is no exception. She observes herself falling into a groupie's shorthand way of burbling about the New York City Ballet: "The Great Saratoga Chaconne; The Diamonds of Saturday Night Closing Weekend." There is a witty tribute to groupies called "Ballet Alert," about the New York telephone service that tells fans of last-minute program and cast switches. The service, run by a voluble woman named Carmel Capehart, depends on information from inner circles of ballet lovers. Capehart's biggest scoop: "Baryshnikov's debut in Union Jack [in 1979 with N.Y.C.B.] He did it twice in one day without telling anybody. If we hadn't caught wind of it, nobody would have been there but the audience."

The book has heroes and heroines. The genius of Balanchine-- especially his clarity and sheer intelligibility-- provides Croce with a critical standard. Baryshnikov is another hero. He too is a wanderer through the book, but in his case the bits and pieces form a full portrait. The principal heroine is Suzanne Farrell, whose career at City Ballet Croce has followed almost step by step. In her rich, precise descriptions of Farrell, she shows the unguarded enthusiasm that must balance measured judgment in a critic. Here, for example, is her account of a 1978 Farrell performance in Balanchine's Chaconne.

"To watch Parrel! stretching a Farrell part is a front-line experience; dancing just does not go further . . . And though she advanced to the very limit of the ballet's style, she never toppled into distortion. Farrell's choreography in Chaconne is already a study in rococo excess. To exceed excess and still not distort: quite a feat."

Prose can provide some fancy footwork too. To read Croce on Farrell-- and others-- is like having a tape library at hand. With a subject as difficult to describe as motion, that is quite a feat.

--By Martha Duffy

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