New Start in Stuttgart

By Lawrence Malkin

When Choreographer John Cranko choked to death in a freak accident last year before the horrified eyes of his Stuttgart Ballet Company, he left the troupe orphaned of its guiding spirit. Now the state and city fathers, whose liberal subsidies underwrite an international company that is one of Germany's most alluring cultural ornaments, have chosen American Choreographer Glen Tetley to plot new directions toward modern dance. Tetley does not take over as full-time director until autumn, but last weekend he premiered his ballet Gemini with his new company. Judging by the opening night ovations, Stuttgart is delighted with its choice.

The ballet is a bravura double pas de deux using four of the company's top dancers. The dramatic Brazilian prima ballerina Marcia Haydee is partnered with the ebullient American Richard Cragun. Joyce Cuoco, who was discovered at Radio City Music Hall, dances with Egon Madsen from Denmark. They appear on an empty, side-lit stage in salmon-pink Lycra leotards shining like a second and highly sensual mermaid skin. Hans Werner Henze's Third Symphony, in turn compressed, then explosive, provides the cerebral score.

For 26 intense minutes, the dancers flit and fit around and into each other like a set of oiled and animated cork screws inspired by the Kama Sutra. Al though the form is that of classical dance, the positions are not. They are an exploration of every inch of space on the stage and around the dancers themselves. Haydee oozes elegantly across the floor on her bottom like a geometric snake, slithering effortlessly upward, feet first and legs spread, over Cragun's waiting shoulders. Tetley amazingly seems to have taught his dancers how to bow their hips into trompe l'oeil convex forms. The two couples slide through a visual glissando of sexual exercises so explicit yet so subtle in execution that the intimacies never shock --except perhaps with the revelation of the extreme possibilities of what a dancer's body can be made to do.

Tetley is determined to link modern techniques with classical form --hence the title Gemini. The ballet's main fault lies in the intensity with which Tetley states his position. Neither dancers nor audience have time to catch their breath for reflection on the extremities of motion and emotion to which they are constantly pushed. And Tetley is too new to the company to take fullest advantage of the dancers' contrasting personalities--for example, Haydee's Latin passion with Cuoco's sinuous California cool.

As a statement of intentions from a self-described "Gemini person," the ballet flows directly from Tetley's twin-track career. Born 48 years ago in Cleveland, he took classical training, then studied modern dance with Martha Graham and Hanya Holm. In Europe since 1962, he has worked mainly with the Netherlands Dance Theater. There his most publicized work was Mutations, an hour-long essay on aggression that ended with the dancers literally stripped bare.

At Stuttgart, Tetley plans to keep Cranko's ballets--such as Eugene Onegin and The Taming of the Shrew--as a mainstay, but depart from his predecessor's emphasis on character and plot in favor of his own exploration of emotion. Gemini has already started the company in a new period of discovery as exhaustive and possibly as creative as the Cranko era.

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