First seen in 2002, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's "Once" opened a six-night run at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday. It was a curious event, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of pretension.
A 75-minute solo set to silence, much of "Joan Baez in Concert, Vol. 2" and a bit of Bob Dylan, it is an intensely, earnestly personal response to music the Brussels-based Ms. De Keersmaeker, now 45 and a leading figure in modern dance, heard growing up. (Of course, it means something rather different to Americans.)
The problem is not in her movements, ultimately repetitive though they may be, or her charismatic presence. She is a severe, striking woman. Her dancing consists of crouches and tight spins and modified ballet moves. There are recurrent gestures (pointing, falling into a fighting stance) and very occasional moments of mimesis to the lyrics being sung (and projected behind her). The problem is the persistent fancy fussiness of the entire presentation.
After 16 minutes of moving in silence, Ms. De Keersmaeker pretends to play the old LP, the jacket of which is leaning against the table on which the phonograph player sits. But this is actually a digital tape and not the complete album. The soundtrack retains the old hiss and crackle of an LP, but Ms. De Keersmaeker tinkers with the volume levels, periodically letting them drop to inaudibility and mouthing the lyrics (of "We Shall Overcome," for instance), as if she anticipates a singalong that on Tuesday was eerily not forthcoming. Of course, its very absence was a comment on the passage of time.
Gradually she sheds articles of clothing until she winds up in black panties with flickering images from "The Birth of a Nation" projected on her body and the back wall.
Given the presence of that film, widely excoriated as racist, and Mr. Dylan's "With God on Our Side," as well as her decision to end with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," this might seem a typical European exercise in America-bashing. But the recurrent images from the film are of war, not the Klan righteously defending the sullied honor of Southern womanhood. Religious fundamentalism is hardly confined to this country. Ms. Baez and Mr. Dylan are both very American. And the bulk of the Baez songs are old folk ballads about doomed love.
Ms. Baez has a beautiful voice, with its quick vibrato and churchy purity. But she represented an earlier era of folk music, the kind that abstracted true music of the folk into genteel entertainment for an urban public. This is not to denigrate the bland beauty of her voice or the sincerity of her beliefs. But her romantic involvement with Mr. Dylan from 1962 to 1965 - the time of this concert album and the Dylan songs heard on it - was curious in that the two were so different.
Mr. Dylan was angry and impassioned, about as far from Ms. Baez's dulcet sweetness as could be imagined. When the bitter "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" comes on, even in Ms. Baez's conscientiously dutiful version, it seems to breathe the air of another planet. No wonder Ms. De Keersmaeker lets Mr. Dylan sing his own version of "With God on Our Side," and replaces the Baez jacket cover with Mr. Dylan's "Times They Are a-Changin.' " The times did change, and the shift from Ms. Baez's sensibility to Mr. Dylan's, right in the midst of their relationship, is a perfect symbol of that change.
So Ms. De Keersmaeker is indeed making a considered statement about this music and those times and her response to them. But she does so in what might be called a typically European way, burdened with overintellectualized artiness. Music, movement and stagecraft didn't cohere for me; they stumbled over one another. Maybe for others it will all make more sense.