Voice of Dance

First Position LXXII
“Hands Off Mr. Goldberg!”
July 30, 2008

By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
© VoiceofDance.com 2008

Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith of the San Francisco Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon's After The Rain. Photo by Erik Tomasson.

Rather than regale you with the best, the worst and the indifferent events of the ebbing 2007-08 dance season, which looked like most of those that preceded it, I’m here to tell you that the season, regrettably, sounded like the others, too. For some reason, you can no longer go a couple of weeks without encountering the same composers over and over again when you attend a ballet or modern dance performance. You will say, what about Stravinsky and George Balanchine? Well, OK, but what about running repeatedly into the very same piece, and in the same recording, too?

You think I’m exaggerating? Within the past couple of years, I have heard Bach’s Goldberg Variations —complete or excerpted, in their original keyboard guise or orchestrated—at least three times (that I can recall) on Bay Area stages, and in no case was I offered the fusion of sight and sound that add up to distinctive artistry. First, there was a brief work by San Francisco Ballet principal Nicolas Blanc made in 2006 for students of the SFB School. It was pretty but inconsequential. At least, the choreography made a stab at incorporating the contrapuntal structure at the heart of this 18th century musical masterpiece.

But, then, along came the SFB New Works Festival and Julia Adam’s a rose by any other name, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty set to transcribed Goldbergs. This, for sure, was the major artistic mismatch (wrong century, wrong mood, wrong sensibility) of the dance season. It was even more disappointing when you realized that Adam had enjoyed some of her greatest earlier successes with commissioned scores by Matthew Pierce. Then, just a few weeks ago, Alex Ketley used the opening aria and its concluding restatement for a rather awful piece shown at the ODC Theater Festival. Ketley gets the prize for converting a classic of Western keyboard music into auditory wallpaper, with students from the S.F. Conservatory of Dance milling around the performance space. It was called Monument, and it was truly a monument to the choreographer’s tin ear.

This same work has, for me, inspired two memorable dances. One was Jerome Robbins’ 1971 Goldberg Variations, which includes all of Bach’s da capo repeats of the 30 variations, extends the piece’s running time to around 80 minutes and brims with formal ingenuity and playfulness. Then, a few years ago, Brenda Way of San Francisco’s ODC Dance choreographed the elegiac Investigating Grace, set to Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of the Bach. This recording had obviously meant a great deal in Way’s life and a personal tragedy generated the mood of fragility that distinguishes the piece. Other choreographers have plundered the same recording, but rarely with such muted intensity.

Now, of course, if there are no royalty issues, everybody is free to make a dance to any music they desire. But, the greater the music, the more the observer should ask, “What did this choreographer hear in this score that compelled the dance? How did it shape his movement scheme?” One cannot help feeling that too many choreographers choose existing music for one of three reasons. One, they like it (which is not sufficient reason to use it for dancing). Two, they think the public likes this music so much that they’ll chill in their seats, no matter what they think of all those bodies jumping up and down; hence, all those Carmina burana ballets, one more horrid than the next. Or, three, because certain pieces supply a beat, a scaffolding, on which the choreographer feels he or she can build.

Thus, we’ve had a steady onslaught of Philip Glass ballets, which pump you up simply for the sake of pumping you up. This is not a blanket condemnation. Robbins’ Glass Pieces, now more than two decades old, and one of the first ballets to incorporate this composer, shows more feeling for Glass’ urban sensibility than most of the hundreds of efforts that have followed. Then, Glass’ commissioned In The Upper Room inspired Twyla Tharp to produce one of her genuine classics. But, now comes the Finn, Jorma Elo, who seems addicted to this minimalist pioneer. One feels a manipulative, even cynical hand at work.

A decade ago, the constant pulse of minimalism inspired a violent reaction among choreographers. They turned to the almost pulse-less effusions of what has been called the “New Spiritualism,” most of it Eastern European in origin. Many of these scores seem mired in stillness and austerity. The space between the notes is where you find the tension. Suddenly, these “new spiritualists” were all in vogue, and you could barely get through an evening of dance without seeing the name of Arvo Pärt in the program credits. But what you saw on the stage rarely probed the score. Then, along came Christopher Wheeldon’s contemplative After the Rain pas de deux, which exalted the spaces between the notes in Pärt’s solo piano piece, Für Alina, and emerged a small masterpiece.

But Wheeldon is an unusual artist, one whose thirst for different music is often astonishing in its voraciousness. Mark Morris used to joke about choreographers who raided their record collections to make up a dance; and much of what we see these days suggest that dancemakers lead very sheltered lives. Every time I see a dancer or choreographer attending a symphony concert or solo recital, hopes are raised.

Of course, composers who license their scores for choreographic purposes must share the blame. Somewhere out there, you will find at least a dozen dances set to John Adams’ Fearful Symmetries. Some years ago, the descendants of Richard Strauss, so appalled by what they saw, withdrew the rights to the composer’s sublime Four Last Songs. Music in the public domain, however, can be exploited at will.

The solution to this dilemma? Choreographers might spend their off-hours devouring music from this and other cultures. They should consider their abstract dances as explorations of those scores. The music should do more than appeal to them; it should speak to them in a profound sense. Critics, for their part, should be on the alert for both cliché and innovation and listen as intensely as they look.

There are glimmers of hope on the horizon. It helps all of us immensely that, in Alastair Macaulay, the New York Times has finally hired a chief dance critic who knows music intimately, is not afraid to discuss it passionately and deems it a crucial element in evaluating the success of a dance. Then, this season just passed has abounded in superior commissioned scores from both established, noteworthy younger composers. Without racking my brain, I can recall Adams’ Son of Chamber Symphony for Morris’ Joyride at SFB; Paul Dresher’s Thread for Margaret Jenkins, also at SFB; Nico Muhly’s music for Benjamin Millepied’s From Here on Out, at American Ballet Theatre and Keeril Makan’s Bone Lines for Benjamin Levy, performed by no less than the Kronos Quartet.

In more than one case here, the music will probably survive longer than the dance. But choreographers must live in the present and let posterity take care of itself. The challenge of a new score, music that is free from autobiographical associations or cultural context, may be the spur to the imagination that dance needs now more than ever.