Dancing Locally, Stepping Globally

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Many hundreds of people turned up for the free open-air dance performances at Lincoln Center on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon in Damrosch Park. The dances covered quite a range, deriving from the Ivory Coast, Haiti, Brazil and, well, the Alps. That is, the Alps as rendered by Rodgers, Hammerstein and Hollywood.

Are there sociologists at work tracing the influence of Julie Andrews on child consciousness over the last five decades? The recent London and New York stage productions of “Mary Poppins,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “The Sound of Music” are all part of this phenomenon, as is the British cult show “Sing-a-long-a Sound of Music.”

The choreographer Doug Elkins’s “Fräulein Maria” (seen on Saturday night) helps us to label this aspect of culture “Acknowledge Your Own Inner Julie Andrews.” The audience gurgles with joy as the dancers hold up lengths of fabric to resemble the Alpine skyline; a white shirt is thrown over one summit to become a peak of snow. Then, yes, out comes a big shaven-headed man, then a woman, then another woman, all dressed identically as Julie, I mean Maria.

It’s all so cheerfully emblematic of a higher silliness that it’s almost wonderful, and the audience loves boosting it with participation and applause. Key roles are played with gender-swapping and multiple casts. The giddy campiness of it all overflows when the eldest von Trapp girl, played by a large man receiving the attentions of an equally large man, responds to his (lip-synched) declaration of “I am 16, going on 17” by eagerly producing a tape measure to check out his veracity.

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