Theater, Dance, Music: What is Dance?

Music, Imagination, and Culture

Nicholas Cook

Clarendon Press, 1990

A Clockwork Orange

Adapted for the stage by novelist Anthony Burgess

Directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones

Starring Jono Davies

New World Stages, Manhattan

October 20, 2017

New Work for Goldberg Variations (2016)

Simone Dinnerstein, piano/Pam Tanowitz, choreography

Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair, NJ

October 21, 2017

Morphed (2016)

Tero Saarinen Company (Dance)

Joyce Theater, Manhattan

October 22, 2017

Emerson String Quartet

Beethoven String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127 (1824)

Shostakovich String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor, Op. 144 (1974)

Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan

October 24, 2017

In Nicholas Cook’s outstanding book on how we hear music, Music, Imagination, and Culture,  he discusses a tribal culture in which a musical performance is appreciated and evaluated not by the sounds produced, but by the visible physical way in which the performers interact with their instruments. Is this dance or music in Western terms? Several recent NY area performances in theater, dance, and music this week caused me to think about this issue. Each exhibited human movement, intentionally or not, as a compelling aspect of the performance. In each, emotion was conveyed by these physical gestures, even though facial expression, the means by which we normally convey emotion, was limited. Overall, each showed “dance” (liberally defined) as an integral part of communicating emotion.

I reviewed the Tero Saarinen Company after a performance of Kullervo in Helsinki, applauding the geometric forms, expressive lighting, and extroverted, narrative dance style, there serving a narrative setting of the Finnish national legend. Morphed, which I saw in Chelsea, is a plotless one-hour work set to (taped) music of the outstanding contemporary composer Esa-Pekka Salonon, specifically his Concert etude for solo horn (2000), Foreign Bodies (2001) and Violin Concerto (2009), all from the composer’s timbrally rich, “colorful” style developed during his residence in Los Angeles. Seven men danced (you can see an except here) on a bare stage surrounded by dangling ropes (prison bars?) which were sometimes bound, wound, and entangled by the dancers. 

Using seven dancers allowed opportunities for 1+6, 1+2+2+2, 1+3+3, and other arrangements, often isolating one dancer in an individual narrative. The piece seemed to address the conflicting roles of isolation, power, and intimacy for men. It begins with the dancers dressed in baggy clothes and “hoodies” (which hid their faces) walking in “concentric” circles of rigid square patterns in opposing directions, perhaps showing isolation, restricted emotion, and the cult of individuality. The solo horn music emphasized this isolation. Occasionally an individual emerges from this grid with more emotive, fluid or agitated gestures, but is quickly sucked back into the machine each time. As the music moves to the colorfully orchestrated Foreign Bodies, the conformity machine breaks up, the hoodies are shed, and pairs develop, but these are largely physical, often violent, just occasionally hinting at attraction. By the end, several dancers are bare-chested; emotive solos and one duet become erotic while other dancers sensually entwine with the stage-framing ropes, now sexual objects rather than prison bars. Choreographer Saarinen wonderfully uses athletic and acrobatic movement to express maleness, and employs a wide gestural vocabulary, keeping the dance varied yet clear in meaning. The dancers were excellent, and seemed to exemplify a range of men: two were young with moppish blond hair, others had beards and/or shaved (balding?) heads. I really enjoyed this dance as a rare depiction of the complexity of male emotion.

Very related in spirit to this male showcase was the “dance” incorporated into the stage version of the apocalyptic A Clockwork Orange. This version closely follows the story of the plot of Kubrick’s famous 1971 futuristic dystopian movie about the street tough Alex, who pillages, rapes, and murders with his merry gang of “droogs”, speaking a hybrid English-Russian patois. He is arrested and de-programmed by government scientists using classic behaviorism, developing consequent physical aversions to violence, sexuality, and Beethoven (his favorite composer). On discharge, he becomes a type of circus of freak, gawked at by the public, who admires this approach to controlling crime. He then attempts suicide, in despair over his now-programmed inability to experience joy and Beethoven. In the famous Kubrick film version, this suicide attempt reverses his programming, and the movie ends with a wicked smile, Alex apparently on his way back to violence. In the less satisfying ending of the novel and this stage versions (both written by Burgess), Alex sees the error of his ways and evolves into a more responsible adult. I really found this ending pallid by comparison to the darker Kubrick version, done over novelist Burgess’ objections. Lacking the visual excitement of Kubrick’s movie design, this taut stage production imported from London substituted constant dance-like physical movement to show crime, rape, and intimacy. The all-male cast, who sometimes portrayed women, were all muscular and constantly sexual and physical, demonstrating acrobatic choregraphed violence, homo-erotic gyrations and even some small dance pieces. 

Jono Davies, the British lead who played Alex in London and here, is a remarkable physical specimen, dancer, and actor, but the surrounding gang members were very much in his league. 

How does NYC theater continue to find these sorts of actors who can act, dance, take on a “foreign” language, and have perfect bodies?. Alexandra Spencer-Jones' excellent direction and "choreography" demonstrated what I have seen before: female directors are often the best able to depict men as convincingly erotic and complexly sexual. Here, the sexuality combined with violence implicit in the “dance” movements provided a worthy substitute for the explicit futuristic violence of the Kubrick movie, making for an excellent performance. While the homoerotic themes were new to the play (perhaps more taboo in 1970s British literature cinema), they worked well and added complex richness to the violence.  Here, “dance” effectively and creatively provided the emotional drive to a familiar narrative.

In contrast, choreographer Pam Tanowitz’ 70 minute setting of Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations (1741) used a more restrained, but still effective vocabulary. Piano ballets are often awkward, with the poor pianist playing some formidable work off to the side of the stage, mostly ignored when the dancers take over. Here, the excellent pianist Simone Dinnerstein was center stage, prominently lit, and featured in the choreography herself (like the dancers, she performed barefoot). Dancers interacted with her, waited for her cues, listened to her, and one even sat behind her on the piano bench moving her feet like rapid pedals as the pianist performed a rapid virtuosic variation.

As in the Saarinen piece, there were 7 dancers, allowing the same sort of geometric patterns. One dancer was male, but he was not used in any sort of traditional pairing/partnering way—mostly one of the troupe (if this unisex approach was the intent, I am not sure why this 6:1 asymmetric sex distribution was selected). The dancers varied in size and shape, rather like Mark Morris’s troupe, and largely moved in animated angular patterns with straight arms. 

This worked great in the contrapuntal or rapid variations, but lacked sinuousness in the slower pieces. Pianist Dinnerstein was excellent in the 30 formidable variations, one of the high points of Baroque music, playing on a modern instrument but with well-articulated early music style. What I enjoyed was that, appropriate to her formidable performance, she was not an accompanist to the dancers, but a true partner. Dancers often looked at her to determine when to start, rather than her following them. This placed the music both physically and emotionally at the heart of the event, and recalibrated the role of music and dance from what it normally is in traditional ballet.

The renowned Emerson String Quartet did not dance or bring tap shoes to their performance. But in their superb performances of late Beethoven and Shostakovich quartets I did notice, as I often have at similar performances, a physical unity and responsiveness that almost became a dance. What do we gain from attending live performances? In solo recitals we watch the performer acutely for facial or physical emotive gestures that echo the music. In orchestral or choral concerts there are too many performers on stage for this, but we use the conductor as sort of an emotional and musical guide, often relying on her gestures, facial expression, and cues to follow and respond to the music. In contrast, chamber concerts allow us to follow the interactions between the group members. These are perhaps the most heavily rehearsed of concerts, relying on the players (who only play from their part, not the full score) to be acutely aware of what the others are doing. This is both an aural and a visual connection, and it was fascinating to see how I could follow the pieces by watching how the four Emerson players looked at and gestured to one another, becoming a unified organism with a common neurologic system. At times, I focused on watching them, and their music became a sort of accompaniment to their subtle “dance”. Try this the next time you see a great string quartet; this consciousness of the physical truly enhanced my appreciation for this wonderful concert of dark, elegiac quartets from late in the lives of two outstanding composers.