DANCE; Old Friends Give New Meaning To 'Pas de Deux'

• Published in: The New York times
• Main Authors: Solway, Diane, Diane Solway is a New York freelance writer with a special interest in dance
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 15.10.1989
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: DANCING; Louis, Murray; Nikolais, Alwin; SOLWAY, DIANE
• ISSN: 0362-4331

''It's terribly challenging and draining,'' declared Mr. [Murray Louis], dropping into a chair in the office he shares with Mr. [Alwin Nikolais], where the sign on the door reads simply, ''Nik and Murray.'' ''One of the biggest difficulties is having to look with each other's eye at the piece instead of only with your own eye. You see the way you would go, and then you say to yourself, 'No, he's seeing it another way.' It has to develop as a double choreographic vision, and you start to feel schizophrenic.'' The choreographers first collaborated on a new dance last July, when they co-choreographed ''Oracles'' for the Athens Festival in Greece. A moody narrative work about the Oracle of Delphi, it featured Mr. Louis in the leading role. (''I'm sitting this one out,'' he said of ''Segue,'' which, in contrast, is ''a sunny, sophisticated comedy.'') The choreographers decided against featuring it in their current season, because its emphasis on narrative is ''too European,'' as Mr. Louis put it. '' 'Oracles' is intense, theatrical and filled with characterization,'' he explained. ''It operates on a European mentality of narrative, whereas the American dance mentality is hysterical on the idea of abstraction. Anything literal is horrifying.'' Unlike past seasons, which featured signature Nikolais works dating back to the 1950's, this season will include works created by the choreographer only during the last decade. In ''Video Game'' (1984), the dancers, bathed in ultraviolet light and painted to look like stick figures, seemingly materialize out of nowhere. ''Crucible'' (1985) uses angled mirrors so that the dancers' arms, limbs and torsos appear to emerge out of the darkness as disembodied forms. Mr. Nikolais is also reviving - and revising - his ''Mechanical Organ I'' (1980) and ''Mechanical Organ II'' (1982). ''There are two aspects to these works,'' he said. ''One is the mechanics of body movement itself; the other is the idea of the individual as an organ that is part of the machinery of nature.''