Taking Swings in the Ring, Without a Fight’s Stakes
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Version 0 of 1. Since Gleason’s Gym opened in 1937, hundreds of the world’s greatest boxers have trained there. As it has moved around the city, from its first home in the Bronx to its current address in Dumbo, Brooklyn, it has also served as the location for countless photo shoots, commercials and movies, including “Raging Bull” and “Million Dollar Baby.” On Saturday it was home to a dance performance. “The Greatest! Hip Dance Homage to Muhammad Ali” is conceived and directed by Peggy Choy and choreographed by her in collaboration with a cast of Gleason’s boxers and New York b-boys. On Saturday, on a makeshift stage and in three boxing rings, they demonstrated their skills in sequences loosely structured around the life of Ali, who trained at Gleason’s to win his first heavyweight title. It was a clumsy, amateurish production with its heart in the right place. The most sophisticated element was Graham Haynes’s jazz-funk score, which was both atmospheric and propulsive but unfortunately not live. Tara Betts’s libretto, recited in voice-over, sampled Ali’s famous phrases and effectively established the racism Ali fought against. Many of the sections were no more than warm-ups. The group dances — hip-hop with punches — were sloppy, undistinguished as choreography and often heavy-handed. In a part about the Vietnam War, the battle that Ali refused to fight, teams of Vietnamese and American soldiers stalked one another in mock battle as Ms. Choy, alone in one of the rings, lunged at the ropes in a protracted, hammy death. Much better was a bit that imagined a meeting between Ali, played by Sekou Heru, and Malcolm X, played by Ze Motion. In a zoot suit, Mr. Motion captured the body language of a Lindy-dancing hustler and suggested how that hustler turned himself into a firebrand. When he and Mr. Heru, both upended, crossed their legs into an X, a b-boy power move acquired thematic significance. Mostly, however, the power moves were bereft of meaning: impressive head spins and handstand push-ups thrown in willy-nilly. The boxing sections displayed technique, but stripped of the drama and stakes of a real fight, they needed and lacked some substitute structure. Most conspicuously missing was any re-creation, much less a choreographic interpretation, of Ali’s great motion in the ring. Only the use of a vending machine as a percussion instrument had a flash of his outrageous wit. Ultimately, “The Greatest” worked less as homage to Ali than as a celebration of Gleason’s and its characters. Some of the young boxers, though presumably deadly, looked adorably innocent. And at 69, the trainer Rayman Panama, a small and ropy man with a jeweled star around his neck, stood for the simple beauty of perfected skill. Setting a hanging slipball swinging at the level of his head, he ducked and swerved with the least possible motion at the last possible instant. That kind of dancing happens at Gleason’s all the time. |