Fagan's Masterwork, Whole at Last

Garth Fagan is best known for choreographing "The Lion King" on Broadway. Now a generation of young theatergoers have seen Fagan’s blend of modern, classical and Afro-Caribean styles, and his ability to delineate character through abstract movement and gesture.

A half-decade before Lion King, he created "Griot New York," widely hailed as his masterwork but rarely seen in its entirety. Fagan’s company performed the evening-length work last week at Jacob’s Pillow to launch this year’s festival, and its subtlety and power have stood the test of time.

The work is a collaboration between three leading artists — Fagan, Wynton Marsalis and sculptor Martin Puryear. Marsalis’s layered and evocative jazz score is a masterpiece, with its references to every era of black life in America.

Puryear’s stark and evocative sets create a sculptural background, with a single giant object forming the backdrop for each scene. A red clay jug was distracting, but a strangely curved hoe and, especially, a slender staircase worked for the dancers. And the dancers are superb. Led by longtime Fagan stars Norwood Pennewell and Nicolette Depass, they convey their joy and pain in equal measure.

A griot is an African storyteller, but there is no actual story or characters. The dance is purely abstract. The first section, "City Court Dance," starts simply, with a couple in sleek black, moving easily, radiating optimism. Fagan’s strong dancers handle the complex geometric shapes and the tricky sequences with ease, like one in which dancers twirl rapidly, arms fluttering around them like a butterfly, and then stop sharply, holding a gradually extended high arabesque.

In the next section, a giant chain hinted at the bitterness of slavery. In "Spring Yaounde," Pennewell and Depass twine slowly around each other in a torchy duet. She bends over him, en arabesque, and somehow he takes the toe of her standing leg, flits and moves her until she’s standing on the other leg, turning slowly until their foreheads bump gently together, canoodling like swans. ("That was hot!" breathed a man behind me.)

In "Sand Painting," the whole company returned, dressed in richly colored unitards, undulating, with hips swinging.

The dark side of African-American life was clear in the wrenching "The Disenfranchised." Dressed in rags and watch caps, the dancers evoked hunger, AIDS, homelessness and utter despair. One man held another on his lap, the second man arching so far that the top of his head touched the ground while the first slid painstakingly across the entire stage into the wings, then returning, with roles reversed.

The final act, "High Rise Riff," returns to celebration, with the dancers doing glorious complex leaps.

This week at the Pillow: two not-to-be missed events: Compagnie Heddy Maalem, performing a new version of Stravinsky’s "Rite of Spring," and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, returning after a five-year abscence.

Tickets for both are available by calling 413-243-0745 or by going to www.jacobspillow.org.