There are no bells or whistles in James Kudelka’s “The Man in Black.”
Gone is the spin and speed of pointe shoes; instead, the sure-footed grace of cowboy boots. No princesses in tutus, no high-tech videos or overt technical displays — just three men and one woman, all in black, in a staging as unsentimental, straightforward and emotionally compelling as its music — six cover songs recorded late in the career of country western and rockabilly legend Johnny Cash.
“The Man in Black” headlines Atlanta Ballet’s spring concert of new company repertory, also featuring “Moments of Dis,” by Atlanta-based dancemaker Juel Lane and “1st Flash,” by sought-after Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo. Performances run Friday through Sunday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
Since Kudelka stepped down as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada in 2005, he’s assumed the life of a freelancer. It has been a trade-off — no more headaches from the job’s administrative responsibilities, more artistic freedom. But he’s also faced limitations, including financial, he said in a phone interview from his home in Vittoria, Canada.
Yet, the need to accept a commission for BalletMet Columbus’ popular music program led Kudelka to create one of his best works in years.
“It was completely out of my league to do this kind of thing,” Kudelka said in a phone interview from his Vittoria, Ontario home. He wasn’t interested in creating a “rousing closer,” for a show, but in doing what he is known for — blending ballet and modern dance influences to create works of emotional subtlety and psychological nuance, such as “The Four Seasons,” which he re-staged with Atlanta Ballet in 2010 and again last fall.
Since age 10, Kudelka has worked in ballet’s elite world. Kudelka, now 56, has performed with the National Ballet of Canada and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and later worked as the National’s artist-in-residence and artistic director. Also a freelancer, he has choreographed more than 80 ballets for some 12 companies, including American Ballet Theatre, The Joffrey Ballet and San Francisco Ballet.
Popular culture hadn’t been part of Kudelka’s life, so he asked BalletMet’s artistic director Gerard Charles for music suggestions; Johnny Cash was on the list.
“I’d seen the movie ‘Walk the Line’ and I knew the music,” Kudelka said. “And I thought, ‘Well, I don’t really know if I want to do a prison drama.’”
But then, Kudelka discovered several albums Cash recorded near the end of his career. These recordings had attracted a vast new audience at a time when Cash’s career in the country western music industry had begun to fade.
Of those, Kudelka chose six songs Cash had interpreted. Sparse arrangements — often just Cash’s gravelly voice and acoustic guitar — gave these songs an emotional depth, from quiet heartbreak in Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read my Mind,” to regret, reflection and abiding love in the Beatles’ “In My Life,” to numbness and alienation in the alternative rock group Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt.”
The song’s simplicity seemed a fit with Kudelka’s interest in distilling choreography to its essence.
Cowboy boots on all four dancers seemed a fitting tribute to Cash.
“It is a celebration of a certain kind of masculinity,” Kudelka said. “It makes your stance a little bit different. It gives you weight; it gives you a bit of noise; it’s extremely sensuous. They throw the body into a beautiful shape. It’s not a romanticized cowboy — it’s “the man of few words, the salt of the earth.”
Reducing a dance to its smallest possible cast — just three men and one woman — would be limiting to some choreographers. But asking Kudelka to keep his cast down to a quartet is like asking J.S. Bach what he could do with only four instruments.
Watching dancers rehearse at Atlanta Ballet’s studio, their movements are understated and unforced, yet powerful. As dancers interweave, their relationships shift: who leads, who pulls the group back, who is corralled on the inside, and who is left alone. Simple gestures — pointing, cradling the head, covering the eyes — are varied far beyond their naturalistic realm. Their meaning grows exponentially.
“There’s nothing hokey about it,” dancer Jonah Hooper said during a break. On building his character, Hooper said: “It’s a quiet confidence, a sense of enjoyment from being in a community, being around people without having to be the center of attention. He’s the backbone, the unsung hero.”
Kudelka, too, doesn’t look to be the next hot choreographer of the day but seeks to further his own artistic errands.
“I’ve really come to the point in my life where I just don’t want to see dance as 18- to 24-year-olds, constantly trying to achieve things, to see how far the body can go,” Kudelka said. He’s interested in the depth of feeling mature performers bring to a dance and the themes Cash expressed so touchingly as he looked back on his life. These are more complex themes of “loss and friends gone and the nearness of death to all of us at all times.”
Kudelka drew from country and western line dancing for the final section. He kept to its simple, 40-count phrases and four-wall facings, but twisted and varied them with carefully designed floor patterns and telling gestures layered in, with profound implications. “The line gets shorter and shorter as people leave it,” Kudelka said, “Until you’re left with the last character.”
In his frank and thoughtful tone, Kudelka remarked, “I’m pretty hard on myself about most of my work and where I fail, but I think I did pretty well with this one. I would love it if it always worked out like this.”
“It’s a combination of Johnny Cash and the simplicity of trying to collaborate with him on this work. I hope he would have liked it.”
Dance Preview
“The Man in Black”
Atlanta Ballet
8 p.m. March 23; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. March 24; 2 p.m. March 25. $20-$120. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway. 404-817-8700 or 1-800-982-2787, www.atlantaballet.com.
Cynthia Bond Perry is dance critic at ArtsATL.com.
