Companies Kick in for a Tribute to Duke Ellington

It’s no surprise that the uneven but unfailingly lively multi-company tribute to Duke Ellington at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Saturday proved more memorable for music than dance: There simply aren’t that many choreographers anywhere who create at Ellington’s level or that many dancers who match his command of both classical and jazz vocabularies.

So dividing the responsibility for “To Duke, With Love” made sense. In the first half, choreographer Pat Taylor explored Ellington’s expressive range in her hybrid style, often asking her JazzAntiqua dancers to move across the music, without reference to its changes of rhythm, phrasing or mood. In contrast, the second half of the program found the members of Chester Whitmore’s Black Ballet Jazz moving on the beat in period pastiches related to Cotton Club show dancing or such specialties as tap and jitterbug.

Further contrasts arrived with special guests: veteran tapper Skip Cunningham during Whitmore’s set, for example, and Le Ballet de Kouman Kele in African folklore plus JazzAntiqua II in a Fosseesque showpiece to an Ellington “Nutcracker” diversion during Taylor’s segment.

Each choreographer sometimes pushed dancers beyond their technical limits, with Taylor’s penchant for ballet rhetoric leading to many shaky balances in extension in “Single Petal of a Rose” and Whitmore’s suave ballroom maneuvers in “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart” leaving most of his cast looking hopelessly stiff. However, Taylor’s “Fleurette Africaine” solo imaginatively mixed African and modern dance influences, allowing Maura Townsend full scope for an exquisitely modulated performance. Charles Zacharie, Elaine Wang and Enrique Retana also exuded security galore in every JazzAntiqua challenge.

Among Whitmore’s soloists, nobody outdanced Melvin Black and Justin Duncan--not even Whitmore himself, who kept falling out of step in the line-dance “Ducky Wucky.” However, he led the Opus One Big Band to glory time after time, with the music sounding sumptuous and sophisticated even when the dancing grew shallow and oversold. JazzAntiqua also boasted first-rate accompaniment of its own: Marcus Shelby (bass), Ark Sano (piano) and Thomas White (drums), with their complex variations on “It Don’t Mean a Thing” one of the evening’s highlights. Sano also figured in the event’s most extended foray into instrumental Ellingtonia--a stylish two-piano medley opposite Chris Glik.

Vocalist Shanda Lear and saxophonist Bobby Brown also soloed effectively under Whitmore’s leadership, while “Black Butterfly” dancer Denise Cook looked promising despite two major handicaps: Whitmore’s thin choreography and an unmanageable costume. The very late start and the inaccurate program data suggested a dependence on last-minute decisions--but most of them paid off, and as the audience left, the fireworks from the Hollywood Bowl across the freeway became a final serendipitous tribute to the Ellington spirit.