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In 1975, the American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett played a solo concert in Cologne, Germany, improvising without a preset structure. The recording of that performance, \u201cThe K\u00f6ln Concert,\u201d became one of the best-selling solo jazz albums ever, its one-man-jam-band free exploration of sounds that you might associate with Rachmaninoff, gospel and country-folk proving as popular with fans of the Grateful Dead as with jazz aficionados.<\/p>\n
One can imagine the album\u2019s appeal for Trajal Harrell, an American choreographer who has found his greatest success in Europe<\/a>. Since 2019, Harrell has been the in-house director of Schauspielhaus Z\u00fcrich, leading his own dance ensemble. The sound of an adoring European audience, as can be heard on Jarrett\u2019s recording, must be familiar to him.<\/p>\n But Harrell\u2019s \u201cThe K\u00f6ln Concert,\u201d which had its New York debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday, doesn\u2019t start with Jarrett. It starts with Harrell, already onstage as the audience is filing in. Over a shirt and slacks, he wears a dress like a smock. He stands and gazes at his audience as if he were a modern-day royal, trying to look casual while holding court.<\/p>\n And when the music kicks in, it isn\u2019t Jarrett but Joni Mitchell. To \u201cMy Old Man,\u201d Harrell starts swaying, swooping, swatting the air, his fingers quivering when Mitchell sings of the lonesome blues. It resembles dance karaoke, or someone dancing alone in a bedroom, except for Harrell\u2019s trademark facial expressions, like Joan Crawford in pain. The vulnerability is armored in affectation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As more Mitchell songs play, mostly from the album \u201cBlue,\u201d<\/a> other dancers join Harrell. Sitting on piano benches, they pick up the swaying motion, their arms scooping back and forth as if through water to Mitchell\u2019s \u201cRiver.\u201d This culminates in \u201cBoth Sides Now\u201d \u2014 the 2000 version, with a gravelly-voiced Mitchell over strings \u2014 and another Harrell trademark: a fashion show, with the dancers taking turns doing runway walks in various outr\u00e9 outfits. They do this very well.<\/p>\n Finally, the Jarrett recording begins (we never hear the whole thing), and everyone comes back in black sleeveless dresses for a succession of solos. These also have an alone-in-the-bedroom feel, as if an elegant woman, a little tipsy and self-pitying, had put the Jarrett on for some sashaying with stumbles. It\u2019s a dance-like-nobody\u2019s-watching style, except that these performers are intensely aware of being watched.<\/p>\n Some of the trouble here is structural. Made in 2021, Harrell\u2019s dance is clearly a pandemic product, with its carefully spaced benches and solo after solo. The solos have a little variation to distinguish them: Titilayo Adebayo swings her long braids like helicopter blades; the statuesque Thibault Lac, a longtime Harrell collaborator, responds to Jarrett\u2019s rapid runs with jerky instability. But they\u2019re all too close to Harrell copies, and the repetition is deadening.<\/p>\n The deeper problem, though, is the near total lack of spontaneity. Much of the joy in the Jarrett recording arises from not knowing where he\u2019s going next and being surprised at how he gets there. In Harrell\u2019s \u201cK\u00f6ln Concert,\u201d there is no surprise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Where Jarrett sometimes sits in a groove, his left hand repeating a simple figure as his right hand roams freely, the combination building momentum, Harrell just seems stuck in his routine. He is good at conceptual pairings \u2014 his breakout pieces combined vogueing with 1960s postmodern dance \u2014 and his coupling of Mitchell and Jarrett helps us hear an affinity between them, a 1970s sound. But Harrell\u2019s \u201cK\u00f6ln Concert\u201d isn\u2019t really about those artists or the music of its title. It\u2019s about his identification with both. Mostly, it\u2019s about himself.<\/p>\n Trajal Harrell<\/strong><\/p>\n Through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; bam.org.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n