By JENNIFER DUNNING JULY 31, 1998
A young girl dressed in a scalloped tunic and kerchief jumps awkwardly on a makeshift outdoor stage beneath the Queensboro Bridge in the late 1960's. Seven shambling young avant-gardists spread the 1970's gospel of fashionably untutored and untheatrical dance performance on a city sidewalk. Ballroom dancers spin and fly through countless nights in the parks of New York City in the 1940's and 50's.
Charming photographs from ''Stepping Out: A Century of Dance in New York City Parks,'' an exhibition at the Central Park Arsenal Building, suggest that outdoor dance performances have long been with us. But those performances have changed a great deal, to judge by the attractions offered by festivals this summer in the city and beyond.
Outdoor dance programs have grown more sophisticated and more varied over the years. The major New York performing arts festivals -- Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Celebrate Brooklyn and Central Park Summerstage -- began with programming to draw specific ethnic groups and provide a forum for local performers. The Brooklyn festival, which began two decades ago with nine performances, has more than 40 this year, ranging from works by what Jack Walsh, the festival's director, called the dance icon Twyla Tharp to pieces by relatively new choreographers. Its setting, the Prospect Park Band Shell, is midway through a $3.4 million upgrading that will improve sightlines and seating and provide better lighting of the complex sort required for dance programs.
Successful outdoor programs made their mark on New York dance history. Modern dance and ballet, a rarity outdoors, could be seen regularly at Lewisohn Stadium, now the site of City College's Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem, from the late 1920's through the 60's. The much-lamented Delacorte Dance Festival in Central Park presented an astonishing variety of dance from the early 60's into the 70's. But it is only in the last decade that the idea of outdoor festivals, once dismissed as second-rate, suspiciously popular entertainment, has caught on in a big way with donors, audiences, reviewers and dancers.
Audiences have grown as producers have broadened the programming and become increasingly willing to take greater risks in their booking, and sponsors have become more willing to support the festivals. Major companies seem willing to appear more often outdoors, too, though that may be in part a response to generally dwindling performance opportunities.
''One of the goals for all of us has been to make this be taken more seriously,'' Jenneth Webster, program director of the Lincoln Center festival, said. ''Not 'Oh, it's free and it's outdoors so it's nothing.' ''
Dance outdoors can present special challenges and rewards to audiences and performers alike. Some things are irritating, like the distractions of the world outside the magic circle of the show. Some are exuberantly liberating, like the sudden rain that enabled the Pilobolus Dance Theater to skid into unplanned children's high jinks years ago at the Delacorte, or simply the size of the stage itself, so much larger than the circumscribed spaces dancers tend to appear in. Everyone, from dance greats to relative neophytes and from fans to casual browsers, must come prepared for the unexpected.
Big-name choreographers and dance companies will perform free this summer in New York City for audiences that, unused to attending formal theater or unable to afford the tickets, might otherwise never see their work.
''We now get a lot of dancers coming out to see each other's work,'' said Bill Bragin, executive producer of the Central Park Summerstage festival. ''But we also get people who are seeing a dance concert for the first time, without the intimidation factor that can happen in other more formal settings.''
Jane Moss, vice president for programming at Lincoln Center, estimates that 75 to 80 percent of the audiences for the festival and the Midsummer Night's Swing summer dance party have never been there before. ''For a brief two months out of the year, they change people's perceptions of Lincoln Center,'' Ms. Moss said.
Aficionados have not been forgotten, though. Tonight, for example, the modern-dance choreographer Molissa Fenley will present two new works, intriguingly entitled ''La Muse Menagere'' and ''On the Other Ocean,'' at the Central Park Summerstage festival. Ms. Fenley will share the program with the Pascal Rioult Dance Theater, a company founded by a former Martha Graham principal dancer, which will also perform a premiere, ''El Mozote,'' based on events in the civil war in El Salvador. In Brooklyn tomorrow night, two newer choreographers, Arthur Aviles and Hernando Cortez, will perform new works commissioned by the Celebrate Brooklyn festival in Prospect Park.
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will open the Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival dance series next Friday with a new ''event,'' as Mr. Cunningham calls his site-specific works. There will also be concerts of dance from Africa and the Dominican Republic and participatory programs of African, American Indian, Korean and Irish dancing. During the week, the festival will present concerts by the New York Baroque Dance Company and the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.
The Jose Limon Dance Company will perform later in August at Lincoln Center, as will Dance Alloy of Pittsburgh, a troupe of aboriginal dancers from Formosa; Noche Flamenca; the Jose Greco II; the Soweto Street Beat troupe, and Pepatian. There will also be talks on Donald McKayle and other black contributors to American modern dance by panels that include Mr. McKayle and Joan Myers Brown, the founder and director of Philadanco.
The Brooklyn festival will present Twyla Tharp and Abdel Salaam's Forces of Nature company in mid-August. Dance will also be performed during the week, too, at Bryant Park and Union Square.
In what promises to be the mother of all outdoor dance performances, audiences will journey through the woods of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass., with Joanna Haigood and her San Francisco-based Zaccho Dance Theater in ''Invisible Wings'' in late August. Created at the Pillow, the multimedia piece recreates the dangerous northward passage of American slaves along the underground railroad, which included a stop on what are now festival grounds.
Open-air settings invariably become a part of outdoor dance. The sun beats down, enclosing audiences as completely as any theater walls and ceiling. Stars provide a dazzling nighttime canopy. Birds dart and butterflies flutter across the line of vision. And the sounds -- whether of planes, sirens and car horns, crickets or the mutterings and rustlings of seat-scavengers -- form the kind of accidental music beloved by John Cage, Mr. Cunningham's longtime collaborator. Such distractions must be endured and even embraced. But often they suggest or reveal unexpected facets of a dance or add to the pleasure of spontaneity that comes only with live performing.
Some things work better than others on an outdoor stage. Intimate gestures and reclining bodies tend to be lost. Spoken text in dance is sometimes difficult to follow. Ms. Webster of Lincoln Center worries about the reverberations from the amplified sounds of footwork in tap and flamenco. Live music can present a problem, particularly for dance performances in the Damrosch Band Shell at Lincoln Center, a more contained proscenium space than the crannies and open plaza spaces that also serve as stages. Ms. Webster has a special fondness for pieces created for those crannies, but how to balance atmospheric lighting with the very real problem of audience members' tripping and falling?
But choreographers, even major ones, need little encouragement to rework dances for these spaces. And dancers tend to love the large stages and audiences that come with outdoor performing. The stages are large in comparison to the small theaters where many of the dancers usually perform. Celebrate Brooklyn, for example, can accommodate an audience of 7,200 in theater seating and on the lawns.
'Feeling a Breeze'
Ben Munisteri, who performed with his dancers at Summerstage this month, talked of the ''thrill of a 1,200-person audience, of dancing on a 15-foot-high stage, using the San Remo as a spot for pirouettes and feeling a breeze ripple through costumes that were designed for that.''
Mr. Cortez said it was profoundly freeing to ''look out at the audience and beyond, to the trees and horizon,'' from the Inside/Out stage at Jacob's Pillow, a rustic hillside space that looks suspended among the trees and sky. Mr. Cortez, like Mr. Aviles a resident choreographer at Celebrate Brooklyn this summer, found himself responding similarly to the large rehearsal space of the Picnic House at Prospect Park.
''The space is huge, unlike any other rehearsal studio,'' Mr. Cortez said of the quaint, light-filled room. ''It allowed me the freedom to expand, to do a lot of moving and sculpting of space. And the slipperiness of the floor allowed us to do baseball slides. I'm hoping they will work at the band shell.''
He will present two new sections of ''Bittersweet Symphony,'' set to music by Simply Red and Sinead O'Connor, that should contribute, he said, to a ''feel-good outdoor experience.'' He said it promised to be a high for his company. ''The openness of a space can enhance performing quality. You move bigger and project expression more.''
Mr. Aviles used the residency to ''go ahead and do something I've wanted to do.'' His ''Narcissus,'' a replication in movement of the cacophony of its score by Charles Ives, as Mr. Aviles described it, was developed through separate conversations and improvisations with two groups of performers whose dancing will be combined with a mirror-image duet. Such a concept -- and the ebulliently outspoken messages of Hispanic and gay pride that inform Mr. Aviles's choreography -- would have been inconceivable in an outdoor festival a decade ago.
Jack Walsh and Rachel Chanoff, co-producers of the Brooklyn festival, base their choices on their own extensive concertgoing as well as advice they and the other festival producers seek from artists and presenters. In addition, Mr. Walsh and Ms. Chanoff ask artists whom they might commission work from to submit a one-page treatment for a new piece.
Are the producers aiming at entertainment or education? Both, they say, in varying degrees. One of Mr. Walsh's concerns is that his performers and audiences have the experience of a professional, fully produced show. ''We're trying to present things that people might not otherwise see,'' he said. ''It's been a journey. Celebrate Brooklyn started with a very definite mission. It was a time when there were very few performances in the outer boroughs. The parks were considered unsafe. We were trying to change attitudes about parks and Brooklyn and create a sense of community.''
For Ms. Webster, the Lincoln Center festival is ''a wonderful way for people to get together and see what other people are thinking.'' For Ms. Moss, such festivals provide the increasingly rare opportunity for people to do something together.
Happily, it all seems to be working. Mr. Bragin said people used to ask whether there would be a Summerstage the next year. ''Now it's 'What will you be presenting?' ''
Where They Are
Here is a sampling of dance performances this summer at outdoor festivals. Events are free unless otherwise noted, though donations are requested for some.
CELEBRATE BROOKLYN presents Cortez and Company and Arthur Aviles Typical Theater tomorrow; Twyla Tharp on Aug. 15, and Forces of Nature on Aug. 21 at the Prospect Park Band Shell, Ninth Street and Prospect Park West, Brooklyn. All performances are at 8 P.M. and will be held rain or shine. Information: (718) 855-7882, ext. 52.
CENTRAL PARK SUMMERSTAGE presents Molissa Fenley and the Pascal Rioult Dance Company tonight at 8:30 at Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, 72d Street and Fifth Avenue. The performance will be held rain or shine. Information: (212) 360-2777.
LINCOLN CENTER OUT OF DOORS presents the Merce Cunningham Dance Company next Friday; the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and the Donald McKayle Celebration on Aug. 13 and 14; Jose Greco II Flamenco Dance Company on Aug. 18, and the Jose Limon Dance Company and the Donald McKayle Celebration on Aug. 20 and 21 at the Damrosch Park Band Shell. All performances are at 8 P.M. Dance programs at the Fountain Plaza include the Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe on Aug. 12 at 5:30 P.M.; Noche Flamenca on Aug. 18 at 6 P.M.; Dance Alloy on Aug. 27 at 5:30 P.M.; Soweto Street Beat on Aug. 28 at 6 P.M., and Merian Soto's Pepatian on Aug. 30 at 4 P.M. Panel discussions will be held on Aug. 14 and Aug. 21 at 5 P.M. on the North Plaza. Events are held rain or shine. Information: (212) 875-5108.
SUMMER IN THE SQUARE '98 presents dance on Wednesdays at 5 P.M. in the center of Union Square Park, Broadway and 14th Street, featuring Art Bridgman, Myrna Packer, Guta Hedwig and Nami Yamamoto on Wednesday; Janis Brenner on Aug. 12; seven emerging choreographers on Aug. 19; Linda Austin and Sandra Botnen on Aug. 26; Victoria Marks and Dan Froot on Sept. 9, and Patricia Hoffbauer, Paul Langland and Brendan McCall on Sept. 16. Information: (212) 460-1208.
JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE FESTIVAL presents Zaccho Dance Theater from Aug. 25 to 29 at 7 P.M. Tickets are $15. The free Inside/Out series, on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 P.M. and Fridays and Saturdays at 7 P.M. at the outdoor theater, includes dance performances by Aleta Hayes, tonight; Steve Paxton and the Improvisation Project, tomorrow, Thursday and Aug. 8; Susan Marshall and Company on Tuesday; the American Indian Dance Theater on Wednesday; Ann Carlson on Aug. 11; Gotham Group Dance on Aug. 12; Allyson Green and Dancers on Aug. 14; Chuck Davis and Musicians on Aug. 15; Urban Bush Women on Aug. 18; Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group on Aug. 19, and Pat Hall and Pam Patrick on Aug. 20. Other free events include book signings by David Vaughan, tomorrow, and Robert Tracey on Aug. 22 in the Harriet Freed Tea Garden at 12:30 P.M., and Pillow/Talk Picnics on Wednesdays at 5 P.M. on the Great Lawn by Susan Marshall and Ralph Lemon next week, Joanna Haigood on Aug. 12 and Diane Ferlatte on Aug. 19. Jacob's Pillow is at George Carter Road, off Route 20, Becket, Mass. Information: (413) 243-0745.
''STEPPING OUT: A CENTURY OF DANCE IN NEW YORK CITY PARKS'' is a free exhibition of photographs of dance performances, competitions and workshops held in city parks, all from the New York City Parks Photo Archive. The show may be seen through Sept. 10 at the Arsenal Gallery, Fifth Avenue at 64th Street, Mondays through Fridays from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Information: (212) 360-8163.