Happy New Year
Happy New Year!
It is raining outside Woodbox, our little retreat on the mesa of Northern New Mexico. The past two weeks have been blissfully quiet - a fitting respite after this intense though rewarding year.
I realize it has been two months since I last wrote and, what a two months these have been. This period saw the final performances of Another Evening: I Bow Down (in Providence, RI) and Blind Date, the major company works we have toured extensively for the past two years and, within a period of ten days, the premiere of two ambitious new creations, one an evening length solo - Walking the Line - at the Louvre Museum in Paris and the other an evening length company work - A Quarreling Pair - at Montclair State University's Kasser Theater in NJ! We also created a proscenium version of Chapel/Chapter, which will see its first performance in a couple of weeks...
Allow me to share some impressions:
Walking the Line:
Painter Anselm Kiefer was invited by the Louvre to curate a series of events during the month of November as part of an initiative of the museum that saw Toni Morrison curating in 2006. He approached me to create a solo. His original suggestion was for the performance to occur under the Louvre's Pyramide, but when we visited the site in December 2006, we realized that it was not appropriate. Wandering thru the museum in search of an alternative we reached the magnificent 450' long sculpture galleries that run from Michelangelo's Slave to the grand staircase upon which the Winged Victory of Samothrace is placed. It was an irresistible perspective... I decided that my collaborators would be Tibetan singer, Yungchen Lhamo, and the French contemporary music virtuoso percussionist, Florent Jodelet. Bjorn had suggested a red dance-carpet to run the length of the gallery culminating in a red "stage" on the first landing of the Winged Victory's staircase upon which the audience was to be seated. This inspired the title, Walking the Line.
When we arrived in Paris 10 days prior to the premiere, I had selected a series of musical options based on which I had prepared movement phrases, but nothing was set. We rehearsed every afternoon in a studio and most evenings (after the museum had closed to the public) in the gallery. Yungchen Lhamo said, "This is our temple" and indeed the space with its chilly beauty moved us thru alternating paths of introspection and expansiveness.
Paris was reeling under a public transportation strike, which turned into a general strike. Bjorn and I zipped around the clogged town on a rented scooter (a no no for a dancer - but such a pleasure, particularly as the weather was exceptionally nice for the season!). The staff of the Louvre made every effort to accommodate our needs overcoming great practical difficulties: Robert Wierzel's exquisite lighting - not an easy challenge in these grand spaces where plugging anything beyond a vacuum cleaner causes the fuses to blow, Bjorn's red carpet as well as Florent Jodelet's complicated instrumental set-up, all had to be dismantled after every rehearsal and re-built before the following day's session as these could not interfere with the public visiting the museum during its opening hours.
Yungchen Lhamo's aura of calm and the beauty of her voice echoing in the space, Florent's percussion's relentless drive booming Xenakis's Rebond, Dufour's Plus Oultre A & B and several pieces by Claude Vivier for an array of exotic percussion,Stage Manager, Kyle Maude's calm coordination of all elements, Janet Wong, insightful and ever efficient all made for a truly singular experience.
The three sold-out performances were extremely well received even by the curators who had shown initial skepticism and apprehension at seeing the priceless still artworks in their custody exposed to our kinetic media. It was a great joy to see the turnout of board members, my sister Rhodessa who flew in from San Francisco, friends from the US, Berlin and Paris, our Executive Director, Jean Davidson. Seldom has any performer had the privilege of using a gallery such as that claiming Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa as a "green room" before a performance. Thanksgiving lunch at L'Escargot Montorgueil with my sister, Bjorn, Jean and friends before heading the Louvre to perform marked thankfulness indeed as did the lovely dinner Anselm and Renata Kiefer hosted in the extraordinary underground maze of studios Bill Katz designed for him under their building in the Marais.
We flew back home on Sunday. Rarely have I felt so well in Paris! Yet there was no time to process or switchgear since Monday morning we began the technical rehearsals for A Quarreling Pair which was scheduled to open that Friday.
A Quarreling Pair:
Bjorn Amelan's design and Robert Wierzel's lighting once again created magic and a fitting frame for the brilliant, original sound-score by Chris Lancaster, Wynne Bennett and vocalist/songwriter George Lewis. The dancers rose to every challenge of this vaudeville show/puppet play/rumination on couple hood and its opposite. This year's discovery and joy for me was the journey we took with newcomer, actress Tracy Ann Johnson, in one of several incarnations of the sisters Harriett and Rhoda. It is with trepidation that, thru repetition, deconstruction and outlandish juxtapositions, I took Jane Bowles's original play set over the course of one day and extended it or, as Programming Director, David Archuletta, said "flipped the script". It worked well enough, although the work still has room to grow...
And this rainy day on the mesa, where all career and ambition seem at a safe remove, asks the question what of 2008?
The closest I want to get to a New Year's resolution is this: I hope to continue living and doing with all my might, yet reserving some place for reflection and - as ever - trying to close the gap between the inner-life and this big and troubling world...
Happy New Year!
2007 was a very good year!
What defines a good year? The criterion falls into various categories. I am here concerned with our organization's good health and future as well as my own circumstances as creator.
A good year means:
• The company's works were shown in an array of venues. A few that come to mind: Blind Date in Milan, Los Angeles' Royce Hall, Taipei's National Arts Center, finally closing in Iowa City's Hansher Auditorium.
Chapel/Chapter did its first out-of-NYC series of performances at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center before an intense week at NYU's Skirball Theater reconfiguring it for touring in 2008. Soprano Alicia Hall, very pregnant, gave wonderful performances as she said goodbye to Chapel/Chapter for a while and hello to motherhood.
Another Evening: I Bow Down continued to deepen at each new venue in Italy, France, Albany's Egg, Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park before closing in Providence, RI. Each engagement drew us deeper into the material and closer to our collaborators, Andrea Smith, DBR, Wynne Bennett and Regain the Heart Condemned.
Jedediah Wheeler and his staff made us more than welcome in a multi-faceted, semester long residency at Montclair University. Not only did Blind Date return to the site of its September 2005 premier, but As I was Saying, an evening showcasing my own dance supported by Leah Cox and Donald Shorter, Andrea Smith, violinist Nurit Pacht and cellist Chris Lancaster also received a warm welcome. And as if that with the classes, lectures, etc., were not enough, we were able to build A Quarreling Pair over several residency periods at the Kasser Theater and premiere it there as well.
• The company's teaching program continues to expand as well. We had a successful winter repertory workshop in NYC and conducted a summer workshop in our third residency at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Our 3 months long teaching primary school students on Randall's Island culminated in a very moving "graduation" ceremony complete with showing of the students' work and medals.
• 2007 was a banner year for me personally. My Tony Award for Best Choreography was one of 8 Tony Awards garnered by
And another high point: Painter Anselm Kiefer and the Louvre in Paris invited me to conceive a site specific work, Walking The Line (NY Times), in the 450' stretch of galleries that connect Michelangelo's Slave with the distant majesty of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Seldom has any performer had the privilege of using a gallery such as that claiming Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa as a "green room" before a performance.
-- Bill T. Jones (Wednesday, January 9, 2008)
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