sarma

I think that when Gerald Arpino began to work on The Relativity of Icarus for the Joffrey Ballet, he meant to make a sincere and positive statement about homosexual love. Perhaps he took on too much in attempting to relate this idea not only to the Icarus myth, but to the Oedipus one, and to the many cosmic ramifications of both these stories. Perhaps he was simply beguiled by his own skill at devising unusual sculptural poses. Whatever happened, the resultant ballet has little to do with Icarus or Oedipus, nor does it seem to be a real or moving exploration of homoeroticism. All of Arpino's ideas seem trapped in glittering and static displays, and this makes them look not so much sensual as pornographic.

The curtain goes up on a small tower, which has giant mirrored vanes that open in irregular ways. A light reflector. Big and bright enough to give the whole audience a tan. But first, all you see is the girl, Ann Marie DeAngelo, in a nude body stocking, painted with rainbows that ripple down her flanks. She's not the sun, she's a very young version of the intruding bitch that always breaks up good relationships between nice young men in modern ballets. She's also a contortionist, or at least, a capable acrobat; stroking herself and leering meaningfully at the audience, she suddenly grabs her leg and pulls it up behind her in a Harriet Hoctor attitude. Not a sympathetic character, this Sun, and about as warm as a window pane in winter.

After her solo, she sits down and starts to reel in a long white rope that she found in the labyrinth. The mirrored vanes begin to spin and fan open, and there on a raked, oval deck crouch Daedalus and Icarus. Scantily clad, Daedalus (Ted Nelson) has prominent arm and shoulder muscles and therefore can lift Icarus (Russell Sultzbach who is a little slighter in build). This is what distinguishes "father" from "son." Many of the lifts involve Nelson's lying down and using his arms and legs to press Sultzbach up into spreadeagled positions that suggest flying. One of the mirrors isolates a view of Nelson's buttocks opening and closing. Oh, Daddy, nobody else can do me like you do. And, held aloft, Sultzbach creates another meticulously sculpted pose as he leans down to lay his cheek on Nelson's codpiece.

When the two men descend from the platform and increase the scope and daring of the lifts (Nelson standing instead of lying), DeAngelo begins to snake around them with two rainbow scarves. Suddenly, in a brief scuffle, drama and motion enter the ballet. Nelson lifts DeAngelo and tries to get her out of the way; he tries to keep Sultzbach from getting close to her. The two men embrace, struggle. Sultzbach finally grabs the white rope and commits patricide in the tradition-approved manner: Daddy gets it in the neck with the piece of umbilical cord Mommy's been saving for years - waiting to slip it to Sonny until his jockstrap filled out. But with Daedalus dead, Icarus can't "fly" anymore; he plunges over into a despairing headstand by his companion's body, while the Sun climbs triumphantly into the labyrinth and jabs her pointe shoes into its floor.

There is little tenderness in any of this. Just before the murder, the two men cling to each other on the floor, but it's too late in the ballet for Arpino to try to express all their old love and mutual dependency as well as one's attempt to go and the other's attempt to hold him back. Perhaps Arpino meant to say that some people never realize they need each other until it's too late, but he didn't leave himself space or time to deliver his message eloquently.

It's hard for me to explain, or even understand, why I find the dance almost pornographic. Perhaps because the poses, and the rubbing of body against body to get to the next pose, are so joyless, so calculatedly beautiful. Also, there is no motion in the dances; the characters don't fly, or struggle, or fall. They assume poses that suggest these activities tidied up and frozen by a sculptor or a photographer. Nowhere in the ballet could I find images of growth or change or movement that would tell me that this thing I was watching was, in fact, a dance. During the first duet, each lift and embrace was isolated so meticulously from every other one that I began to feel as if I were flipping rapidly through a striking photo essay in After Dark, experiencing only a vague semblance of motion.

Interesting to remember Lucas Hoving's Icarus - a dance that would seem almost drab beside this one. Hoving's Sun was a remote goddess-ignorant of evil, innately magnetic, pursuing her own course. And, especially when Hoving played Daedalus, that Icarus suggested not only the relationship between a son and a stern, loving father, but the one existing between a young dreamer and a disillusioned one, between a poet and a practical man, between two lovers. Hoving's dance was modest, but it conveyed much. Arpino's ballet is an elaborate trap that throws his ideas back at him, distorted by a new kind of hall of mirrors-one that makes everything horrifyingly glamorous.

Gerald Arpino has firmly denied that he was trying to make a homosexual ballet. There is always the possibility of a discrepancy between what a choreographer intends to make, what he makes, and what another perceives him to have made.