Revival and Re-Creation at the Getty

Where else but at a palace of Western culture could you get away with introducing a dance by saying that Greek art “has been and will be the art of all humanity for all time”? Back when Isadora Duncan said it, maybe no one balked, but a little context is in order to explain Greek revivalists these days.

In fact, a lot of context would have enhanced “Modern Antiquities II: Ancient Art Informing Modern Dance,” a concert by American Repertory Dance Company on Saturday in the courtyard of the new Getty Museum. The idea was to make links between dance and the current exhibit of Greco-Roman antiquities. There are plenty, but they aren’t about some “pure” influence; rather, they’re about the way modern dancers have imagined themselves ancient. There was Risa Steinberg as Duncan, stamping her foot in “Dance of the Furies” and capering in “Bacchanale,” big hits in 1907, but program notes failed to mention that Duncan was using ancient associations to help legitimize a new dance form.

Projected slides of the more famous British Museum marbles and statues would have helped show how Duncan, and fellow American Ruth St. Denis, stole from sculpture; the Getty exhibit contains few examples of the kinetic figures that inspired them. A reconstruction of St. Denis’ “Brahms’ Waltzes,” first done in 1914, was trippingly played on piano by Alan Terricciano, and danced by Nancy Colahan with more ballet technique than any ancient Greek--or Miss Ruth--could ever have mustered.

“Ceremony for Three: Sage and Warrier,” Bella Lewitzky’s 1972 solo evoking the Spartan warm-up of a male war machine, was danced by John Pennington, who was all curves and angles, balance and brawn. Severity also was the mood of Mary Wigman’s “Witch Dance” (1926), which Bonnie Oda Homsey, in a hauntingly mournful mask, danced with almost as much severity as Wigman herself.

From Mark Morris came a sense of humor: In his “Greek to Me,” the portly Peter Wing Healey looked like a Greek folk dancer who had wandered into a campy Baroque opera. The Greeks may not have created universal art, he could have been saying, but at least they knew how to have fun.