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DANCE REVIEW Electrifying Conjunction October 18, 2002
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By Allan Ulrich
It may tell us something (and something not particularly
encouraging) that the least substantial music generated the most coherent
choreography in this recent collaboration between famed post-modernist Bill
T. Jones, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and eight members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,
an
alliance of forces who have travelled the country for most of the year. With
Beethoven, Ravel, Shostakovich and György Kurtag on the menu, the program at
Zellerbach Hall, University of California, Berkeley recalled George
Balanchine's wish for his own New York City Ballet audiences — if you
didn't
like the dance, he hoped you could at least enjoy the music.
Fortunately, even with the players cutting up scores like bolts of
fabric
for a new suit and then alternating between pit and stage, there was plenty
to savor in this project. That Jones has followed the lead of Mark Morris in
insisting on live musicians has proved rewarding, as much for dancers'
responsiveness as for audiences' appreciation of dance. Despite one's
reservations, a feeling of spontaneity, an alertness, even a sense of danger
marked the evening. All nine dancers were listening and interacting with
their illustrious collaborators. Jones, a formalist at heart,
notwithstanding
some of his more textually oriented works of the past, remains musically
curious, eager to explore important scores that merely mortal choreographers
would shun or terminally trivialize.
Yet, it was Shostakovich's Prelude and Scherzo for String Octet, Op. 11 — early, propulsive, nose-thumbing music pervaded by the kinetic energy of a smart adolescent — that summoned the antic Black Suzanne, in which the sardonic sounds from the pit and the physical games on the stage fused, to mildly delirious effect. Assisting the Orion were violinists Timothy Fain and Ruggero Allifranchini, violist Hsin-Yun Huang and cellist Sophie Shao. Opting for slashing attacks, the players brought their own kind of breathlessness to the performance. As accompaniment to Jones' collisions of massed bodies and wedding cake configurations, Shostakovich hit the spot.
Still, it was Beethoven who inspired this entire evening, more specifically the slow movement from the F major Quartet, Op. 135; and here, one remembered Balanchine's advisory about this composer's unsuitabilty for choreographic ventures. Jones prepared a solo to the third movement (Lento assai) of the quartet for a Classical Action benefit last year and later set the entire piece, Verbum. That solo, performed with rapt conviction by Malcolm Low, emerged a study in contemplation, as the dancer wove a slow trajectory around the stage. Limbs were isolated, arms raised in supplication and folded in serenity; convulsions radiated through the torso. The suggestion of spiritual transformation was complete. The remaining three movements convinced less. The Orion offered a balanced performance, its tempo seemingly calibrated for musical integrity rather than the dancers' natural inclination to stretch phrases. Yet, what sounds organic in Beethoven's designs — the questioning motto at the beginning, the rapid figurations of the scherzo, the "muss es sein?" query and response in the finale — translated conscientiously but unconvincingly into movement. A pointed, quivering finger somehow seems an incomplete response to a reiterated triplet. The four members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center became physical participants in World II (18 Movements to Kurtag). A compilation of Kurtag's String Quartet No. 1, Hommage à Mihaly Andras and Twelve Microludes for String Quartet, the work's excessive movement formalism (repeated and accumulated gestures) and the epigrammatic character of these extraordinary pieces — rendered with conviction by the ambulatory string players — added up to an ascetic exercise in which the senses were compelled to focus on the most minute musical and dance phrases. Ultimately, in spite of the shimmering performances occasionally delivered at the threshold of audibility, the tension, in the absence of release, became downright oppressive. The playing dominated the movement during a fidgety improvisation (by dancer Leah Cox, set to the third movement (Très lent) of the Ravel F major Quartet. Clarity of texture prevailed; cellist Timothy Eddy's acerbic attacks found a welcome contrast in Steven Tenenbom's lush traversal of the viola part. The final movement (Vif et agité) served as a musical interlude while the dancers quietly laid a floor for the last work on the program. Music to Move Furniture By? Ravel must be turning over in his grave.
(Allan Ulrich is interim news editor of Dance Magazine. He covered both
classical music and dance for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco
Chronicle for 22 years. He writes for a variety of American and
international
publications).
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