Dancing To The Music Of Charlie Mingus

In a book called The Jazz Story (Prentice Hall, 1964), the author, Dave Dexter, Jr., had this to say about the music of  [jazz bassist] Charles Mingus: "[He] composes and plays music that is often understandable to no one but himself."

Such music, you would think, would be difficult if not impossible to choreograph to. But Loris Anthony Beckles of the one-year-old Blue Mercury Dancing Company has managed to do just that. The 12-member multi-ethnic group performed these, and other works, at the Theatre of the Riverside Church on April 22, 24, and 26 [1987]. The program was in tribute to what would have been Mingus's 65th birthday (he died in 1979).

The longest of these pieces, "Eclipse," ran about 30 minutes. It featured a series of solos by the dancers using a lot of abstract movements and patterns beginning with the dancers parading around the stage backwards with their arms folded across their eyes. All of this movement is accompanied by polyrhythmic drumbeats. In this piece, the dancers put on a great display of energy and agility.

Like all of the Beckles choreography performed at TRC, there is the absence of a storyline: the audience must be willing to bring its imagination to the theatre. Beckles prefers this. "I'm not interested in telling a story," says the 33-year-old native of Guyana. Dance, he continues, can be enjoyed for the beauty of the movement and its celebration of the human form.

One of the most strikingly beautiful dances created by Beckles is "SheKing," inspired by Coretta Scott King, who represents "an elegant black woman in bereavement." The six women, in black gowns that seemed to float in the air with every movement, were placed in my mind in some ancient civilization, perhaps Egypt. Leonora Stapleton, who has a solo here, exhibited a queenly presence.

The only piece that had a more clearcut storyline is Michael Vernon's somewhat erotic but memorable "Changing Opinion," with haunting music by Philip Glass. Two males (Beckles and Tyrone Aiken) and a female (Stapleton) are cast. It is the tale of a romantic triangle in which one of the males emerges victorious. Much of the action takes place on a wooden bench with the female situated symbolically at the center. The men, especially Aiken, gave a strong performance. Stapleton, on the other hand, came off rather nonchalant.

Ray Tadio's "The Moon in Libra" and "Dear Giovanni" I found uninteresting, except for the solo jazz piano scores that accompany each dance.

Although these young dancers were a bit awkward at times, they nevertheless deserve high marks for having the guts and stamina to take on the demanding task of dancing to Mingus's cerebral music.

This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (May 23, 1987).