Choreographer and dancer Garth Fagan was born in Jamaica. The dance that made him famous is as much of a melting pot as America itself.
Fagan's name might not send up any flags of recognition, and yet millions have seen Fagan's work and called it art.
In 1998, Fagan won three major awards for his choreography in the Broadway adaptation of Walt Disney's The Lion King: the Drama Desk Award for outstanding choreography, the Outer Circle Critics Award for best choreography and the Tony Award for best choreography.
Director Julie Taymor (Frida, Across the Universe) was celebrated for the theatrical puppets she developed for The Lion King, but it was Fagan who taught the actors to move like the beasts of Africa.
Garth Fagan's dance company will spend 2011 celebrating 40 years of dance. One such celebration will be at the University of North Texas at 8 p.m. Tuesday. A bonus for dance and theater lovers: The company performs at the University Theatre in the Radio, TV, Film and Performing Arts Building. Patrons will see breath, sinew and sweat as the company resurrects some of Fagan's earlier work. The company will also show dances Fagan is cooking in the 21st century.
What put the choreographer and the company on the American arts map was Fagan's ability to consider his life - not to mention the world - through his experiences in New York City. He saw that the real-life Emerald City - a place of progress and possibility, where all your dreams could come true - was also home to ghetto, barrio and burrow.
In his landmark works like From Before, created in the late 1970s, Fagan put the human condition in the torso - the house of the heart, belly and libido. Anchoring movement in the torso paid tribute to Fagan's West Indies heritage. It also created a counterweight to George Balanchine's choreography. Balanchine drew the eye of his audience away from the pelvis when he built a ballet.
Fagan's dancers trained their middles to wiggle, snap and groove in the Afro-Caribbean style. Their choreographer and dance master, however, rendered his ethnic form through the poetry of the godmother's of modern dance: Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham. Fagan was influenced as well by Alvin Ailey, the standard for high-flying modern dance, and Jose Limon. When Fagan's dancer's performed, they didn't hide behind costumes. Their bodies were the page, the canvas and the picture tube. By 1998, Fagan's dance and dancers literally became page, canvas and picture tube as Taymor covered them in Disney's Technicolor palette.
The UNT Fine Arts Series presents the company, and when audiences settle back in their seats, they can expect nimble feet that beat the floor like a drum, limbs conditioned to stretch by ballet and a fire in the belly made real.
Tickets to the performance are $30 for adults, and $15 for UNT faculty, staff and non-UNT students. Admission is free for UNT students who show ID.
For more information, call the University Union information center at 940-565-3805.
LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com .
