Richard Alston Mixes It Up

Last year, the London dance world celebrated Richard Alston’s 60th birthday and 40th anniversary as a choreographer of singularly fluent, musical and individual dances. But as the veteran British choreographer continues to find new sources of inspiration, he is not in a mood to look back.

“When I go into the studio and shut the door, I forget how long I’ve been doing it. It’s so immediate, I still find it so exciting. I just love being in the room with the dancers. The only difference is that, because I’ve been doing it for 40 years, I’m very fortunate to be as secure as I am. And I’m not as worried as I was when I was younger,” Alston said over lunch at a Chelsea restaurant last October, when his company was just completing several weeks of U.S. touring.

Next week, the company returns to the Joyce Theater, where two previous stints (in 2004 and 2006) left a lasting impression of inventive, adventurous musicality, clarity of design and focused craftsmanship—a rarity these days. The three works the 11-member company will perform are set to quite a mix: Philip Glass, Stravinsky and Hoagy Carmichael. Glass’ music has long been catnip to choreographers, but Alston had not turned to it until he made Blow Over, set to three selections from “Songs for Liquid Days,” last year.

“This is a very different kind of music of his, because it’s got singing voices, and he specified that it should be a pop voice. It has this very direct contact above all the usual layers of grandeur and exhilaration,” Alston said. He chose the selections with lyrics and vocals by Suzanne Vega, Paul Simon and David Byrne.

“I’m always trying to find something different, something that makes me create work in a different way,” he said. He definitely found a very different approach when he took on Stravinsky’s Petrushka in 1994—the same year his current company was founded. For Three Movements from Petrushka, the middle work on the Joyce program, he worked with a piano solo version, and put the pianist center stage. The dance posits a Petrushka equivalent at odds with society, and also evokes the mental disintegration of Vaslav Nijinsky, who danced the lovelorn puppet in the original 1911 Fokine ballet.

Alston noticed a connection between the choreography for the Nijinsky role in that original, and the movement we see is reconstructions of Nijinsky’s own choreographic output. “It’s all very turned-in, introspective, not mentally outgoing movement. It expresses what became, eventually, Nijinsky’s mental condition,” Alston said.

His version juxtaposes a high-spirited ensemble with the anguished outsider. It’s a work with which he feels a particular personal connection—and one which the Washington Post’s Sarah Kaufman hailed as, “an insightful look into the effect of artistic demands and celebrity,” during the Alston company’s October tour.

Recordings of Hoagy Carmichael singing and playing piano from the 1940s provide the score for Shuffle it Right, a work created last year that deftly combines breezy high spirits with bittersweet reflection. It calls for fleet, demanding footwork and understated bravura from the dancers, presented with an air of freshness and amiability. Alston had made a work in the 1980s that used various versions of the song “Stardust,” a Carmichael standard. “It wasn’t a theatrical idea, and it didn’t really work,” Alston said. “Suddenly I wanted to go back and have a look at ‘Stardust’ again, and this piece ends with a piano version of the song—really him just fumbling around on the piano.

“Carmichael is sometimes called the first singer-songwriter, and these are extraordinary recordings. Some are private ones that are very strange, but interesting. There are some amazing singers who sing his work. But in the end, he’s got an amazing character in his voice.” He notes the work’s challenges for the nine dancers: “It’s very exact, and quite technically demanding, but they have a lot of fun.”

Alston spent two formative years in New York City during the mid-1970s, studying with Merce Cunningham and soaking up the city’s contemporary dance scene. Cunningham’s name surfaces often as he discusses dance then and now, in London and New York.

“I do really believe that the best kind of artist will start from what he or she believes in absolutely. That was probably the biggest inspiration from Merce. He and John [Cage] believed in what they were doing—absolutely no compromise. That’s why he was still able to do what he could at the age of 90. I find that integrity so inspiring,” Yet, he notes, “My belief in dance is paradoxically very different from Merce’s. I believe in dance as an amazing expression of humanity. That’s what gets me excited.”

>Richard Alston Dance Company Jan. 12 to 17,  Joyce Theater, 75 8th Ave. (at W. 19th St.), 212-242-0800; $19-49.