Dance
Time Out New York / Issue 700 : Feb 26–Mar 4, 2009

In his program notes for Pulcinella, Douglas Dunn refers to the commedia dell’arte character as being “singular and plural, everyone and someone.” This week, he revives his witty and appropriately inclusive Pulcinella as part of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival in a program that also includes the premiere of then boss in man?

For the remounting of Pulcinella, originally created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1980, Dunn has assembled a group of 15 contemporary dancers. The choreographer, who has made dances in New York since 1971—at which time he was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the collective Grand Union—has held firm over the years, quietly creating dances that possess a free-spirited refinement. For Renata Celichowska, director of the Harkness Dance Center, Dunn is a rare artist whose postmodern roots have held true. “You see simple ideas where symbols are imbued with so much meaning,” she noted. In his cozy Soho kitchen, Dunn spoke about the process of bringing his plotless Pulcinella, set to Stravinsky, back to life.

What do you remember about working in Paris for Pulcinella’s premiere?
I loved being in Paris. They didn’t give me the best dancers; they gave me the younger dancers and the older dancers. I chose all the younger dancers because they were eager to work and they were very good—they weren’t the most elegant people who were going to become étoiles, but they were highly trained. And, of course, this created a huge resentment right away from the older people who had always had these younger dancers as their understudies. They went to the administration and were told, “Douglas can choose,” and that was great. They calmed down after that. They sat in the back, wrote in their diaries, smoked and read novels while the younger people did the work.

How did the first performance go?
I was so tired and full of emotion; during the overture, I held my breath. As soon as it stopped and the curtain was about to open, somebody from the back yelled, “Lamentable!” Apparently he considered the orchestra not really up to it. It just completely relaxed me. I think I started crying, but in a good way. I loved that moment. [Laughs] Also, I kind of liked having an overture to a dance I made—it’s so odd.

Since you won’t have a live orchestra at the Ailey theater, what will happen during the overture?
[Costume and set designer] Mimi [Gross] and I had the same idea—she said, “Douglas, you’re not in this dance anymore. Why don’t you make something for the overture?” I had already had the thought. So we’re cooking up a little something. It’s only a minute and a half, but I like the idea of somehow being engaged with the piece; it’s sad to me that I can’t dance in it now. It’s so much fun.

In the original production, Jean Guizerix and Wilfride Piollet were the leads. Were they actual characters?
No. When I made the piece, I spent a lot of time with the music. I worked for about a year by myself. I decided not to look at any other versions of Pulcinella. I was too nervous. Mimi guided me to the drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, and I found them very helpful. One reason is that there’s a character called Punchinello, and every picture is full of a bunch of them. I thought, All the dancers can be Pulcinellas It helped resolve this oddity of going to a place where they have such a clear hierarchy of dancers, where you’re not even allowed to work with the étoiles as a group until the end.

That is the antithesis of how modern dance works, right?
Yes. As a modern dancer, you don’t distinguish so clearly between better dancers. There is a slight hierarchy in the piece: There are the male and female leads and two women who have more prominent parts, but everyone else pretty much has the same degree of exposure. But, of course, in a 40-minute piece I needed some distinction of presence. I played off the whole thing about the ballet traditions of centrality and circles, of a dancer being in the middle and not in the middle. At one point, a corps dancer jumps in the male lead’s arms—it was a joke, and the Paris audience got it. [Laughs]

How do you incorporate the sensibility of a group in Pulcinella?
I got my modern dance image of everybody as somewhat equal, plus playing off the opera’s idea of, “No, there are more important people and less important people,” and played between those two images of what a dance group is. There’s no real story in the ballet, but there’s sort of the story of the ballet convention, the modern dance convention and some kind of meeting of the two.

What about dance still captivates you?
I’m more than ever interested in the details of the steps and the moves. I thought maybe I would get bored or outgrow it or get tired. On the contrary. The idea that I encountered when I came to New York in ’68 was that dancing was something that might stand by itself. That is a huge, daring thing to promote and not that many people are interested in it—we all have to admit that. But I find it more fascinating than ever. There’s so much food for feeling.

Douglas Dunn & Dancers performed at Ailey Citigroup Theater Thu 26, Sat 28 and Sun 1 following this interview.