Martha Graham's Night Journey in Danceworks 2013 (photo by Mike Peters).

The Friday, April 5th performance of Danceworks 2013 was dedicated to Linda Roberts, who, after 42 years of teaching in the Department of Theatre and Dance, will retire this May and FINALLY get some sleep. Like many other alumni, I attended the performance to remember where the department has been. I am sure I am not alone when I say that the level of dancing and overall choreographic strength leaves me excited for where the department will go. 

The show included an impressive range of choreography, by Martha Graham, May O’Donnell, Bill T. Jones, and Earl Mosley, to name a few. The theme, “Myth and Transformation,” was evident in each piece, which tenaciously led—or yanked—the audience along an aesthetic journey spanning decades of innovation in dance. Among iconic works, including the “Daughters of the Night” Chorus from Graham’s Night Journey, Rebecca Stenn’s Approaching Silence was premiered. Formerly of MOMIX and now director of her own company since 1996, Stenn was commissioned through the Department of Theatre and Dance New Works Initiative (NWI). With a text inspired by the work of Harold Pinter, Stenn’s dance-theater piece conveyed a deep-felt nostalgia for memories long gone or, perhaps, a wishful yearning for dreams not yet lived. 

The origins of Approaching Silence, under the auspices of the NWI, are as compelling as the performance. Thanks to the patronage of Holly J. and Robert S. Gregory, the NWI annually commissions an original work not previously produced. NWI pieces incorporate both spoken text and movement and must be developed on Montclair State students. From a nationwide pool of applicants, an artist is selected by a three-member panel of Theatre and Dance faculty, including Professors Beth McPherson, Debbie Saivetz, and Neil Baldwin. Past projects included The Agee/Evans Project by Molly Rice, with music by Stephanie Johnstone, and we love you get up by Chase Brock, and next year’s piece will be created by recent Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Claire Porter. 

NWI gives students the opportunity to experience the nascent stages of a work that may be set later on other students or companies or reworked further in its life as a performance piece. This offers a different, though equally valuable, experience from performing a classic piece like Night Journey, in which students must embody the Graham legacy in choreography that has been passed down through generations. To Beth McPherson, the difference is between “experiencing history and creating history.” In Stenn’s rehearsals, students’ own improvisations and personal experiences contributed to the development of the piece. The audition for the three speaking roles did not involve a monologue; rather, students were asked to describe their own memories. Mirela Amaral, a senior Dance major who performed in both Night Journey and Approaching Silence, compared the two by saying, “For Night Journey, there was a story to tell; in Approaching Silence, there was no story, so, for myself, I drew from my own memory.” 

NWI also provides an opportunity for theater and dance students to perform together in the same piece. The students in Approaching Silence were excited to collaborate, which is evident in the communicative relationship between the text and movement. NWI also sets a proactive example for young artists. Debbie Saivetz tells her students to be “generative and make their own theater projects,” instead of depending solely on auditions for other people’s work. 

The range of pieces in Danceworks 2013, whether from the 1930s or premiered this year, demonstrated the life of dance in the past, present, and future. The dancers who perform any given work—for the first time or the thousandth, decades later—share that experience in their bodies and minds forever. It is especially fitting, then, that this concert was dedicated to Professor Roberts. The knowledge that she has shared with the student performers and alumni in the audience, including myself, will be passed on and re-envisioned in much the same way as the works on stage. 

Hannah Rolfes has a B.A. in Dance from the University of Richmond. She currently teaches dance and is a company member of moe-tion dance theater under the direction of Maureen Glennon.

Show & Tell @ Montclair Public Library (March 14, 2013).

I started my passionate love affair with libraries by protesting two of them. An odd beginning to a love affair, but stranger things have happened. Both my former high school library and public library had banned the book Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, and, in protest, a group of fellow theater artists and I started touring around performing readings of the book anywhere people would let us—a project we called Revolutionary Readings. This caught the attention of the Princeton Public Library, who invited us to speak and perform from the book. Unlike the libraries we were protesting, they felt that books should be on shelves, not banned. Throughout this process, my views on libraries and librarians shifted from the stereotypical vision of quiet, dusty book shelves patrolled by little old ladies to what I now find to be a much more accurate description: cultural centers operated by fierce advocates of access to knowledge. 

My work with Revolutionary Readings led to a partnership with the Princeton Public Library that is now entering its third year. Librarian Janie Hermann and I have launched a program called Page to Stage, in which we provide the public free access to staged readings of plays that have been adapted from or inspired by literature. In doing so, I’ve been able to actively experience the use of the library as a center of culture and to witness the value of merging the arts with libraries. My evolved perception of libraries is a far cry from the foolish thought that their sole purpose is that of a silent study hall. The merging of libraries and theater makes sense when you think about it. With shared values of education, entertainment, and access to important stories, the two are natural partners. 

This partnership is being explored at the Montclair Public Library with a new series entitled Show & Tell. Grace Grund, owner of Terra (a fair trade cafe located in the library…a delicious one at that), had the idea to bring together the library and Peak Performances to create programming that provides educational context for performances at the Alexander Kasser Theater. The series, piloting this spring, features talks by artists, scholars, and people with expertise in topics related to selected performances. Grace says she is “a believer and advocate of art in public spaces, and [her] mission at Terra is to build community.” Show & Tell is the perfect way to help do that, by connecting cultural forces in the town of Montclair. 

I was thrilled to see this kind of programming emerging right around the corner from me, so I chatted with Grace about the role she thinks the arts play in libraries: “Art informs and transforms community. Libraries are centers of information and, more often than not, are the ‘default’ centers of community for most towns. If art is an expression of living a life or a way of looking at the world or an opportunity to share an idea or lament an emotion, it belongs in the center of a community. Are libraries the last ‘free,’ accessible safe place in a community? Feels like that these days. If that is the case, then the arts belong there, to serve, enliven, enrich, describe, and inspire this place.” 

I attended the second installment of Show & Tell, a discussion of activism and art in South Africa presented in advance of performances of Katlehong Cabaret by South Africa’s Via Katlehong Dance. The presenters were Dr. Akil Khalfani, an author, actor, and director of the Africana Institute at Essex County College, and Mama Yaa, a dancer, musician, and teaching artist (and a personal colleague—I learned about African dance and drumming from Mama Yaa while working on a new piece called In Development at the Vineyard Playhouse last fall). 

Mama Yaa and Brandon Monokian at Show & Tell @ Montclair Public Library (March 14, 2013).

Dr. Khalfani began with an overview of the social history surrounding racial classification before and during apartheid, and he described his personal experiences of the protest movement in Pretoria as a graduate student in the early years of the post-apartheid era. Mama Yaa then gave us a taste of the social role of dance and drumming in everyday life in African cultures. She talked more specifically about gumboot dance, a high-energy, percussive form featured in Katlehong Cabaret that began as a subversive form of communication used by South African mine workers. Wearing her work boots and a miner’s hat, she even taught us a few steps and had the whole audience out of their seats and dancing. Seeing Katlehong Cabaret, I felt much more informed about the performance, knowing the social context in which these dances were created. They were more than just visually entertaining steps; they were telling a story that carried with it a history. The company also invited audience members to dance—at their seats and on stage! Mama Yaa said that in African dance there is no audience and there is no performer—we are all a part of it. 

After the performance, I asked Grace what gave her the idea for Show & Tell. “In a previous life,” she said, “I was a dancer, and I also worked in arts management at Lincoln Center and at Dancing in the Streets. Both are presenters of performing arts in public spaces. Both strive to make the performing arts accessible to many. My experiences with these organizations [have] shaped the way that I view art and how art and folks meet up—that it does have its place in a theater, but that it should also be performed and talked about in nontraditional theater spaces.” 

“The Montclair Public Library built a community wing about 15 years ago. It is an excellent space and very accessible to all folks. When Terra landed at the library two years ago, it became clear to me that this space would be an ideal venue for cultural programs. Even before Terra became part of the library, I would talk with Jed Wheeler and Carrie Urbanic [of the Office of Arts & Cultural Programming at Montclair State] about our mutual interest in connecting the Montclair community and Montclair State University. Show & Tell is a way to foster that connection….  So working with the Alexander Kasser Theater is the beginning. The town is filed with artists, writers, producers of all sorts of creative work. It would be great to include them in the future. Show & Tell is a way to feature the library as a venue for cultural events.” 

The power that Show & Tell had to enhance my understanding of Katlehong Cabaret, as well as my experience with Revolutionary Readings and the Page to Stage series, make me excited for the future of this program and what can be accomplished with the arts at Montclair Public Library. The initial offerings have been well received by library patrons and Kasser Theater–goers. The spring program will need to be assessed before the library can approve plans for next season. Grace hopes that the library will agree to continue the pilot partnership with Peak Performances and possibly expand to include some theater and other performing arts departments at Montclair State. Grace added, “I’d love to see a classical music series at the library, with local musicians and artists from the University’s Cali School of Music. Of course, all of this is a conversation that has to take place, first with the library director and then its trustees. Show & Tell has the potential to transform the way one looks at the art, the space, and at oneself.  It offers participants insight into the work being performed.  It allows the participants to ask the questions, the artist to consider how the work might be received. The outcome—there is that much more understanding and appreciation, I think, for the work. I sometimes liken this to Show & Tell in grade school. Every one of us has something to show and to tell about.  Everyone gets the opportunity. There are basic rules of sharing, and everyone learns something about each other. Pretty simple.” 

Don’t miss the next Show & Tell @ Montclair Public Library: Thursday, April 11, at 7:00pm. On the 100th anniversary of the infamous premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, join us for a discussion on how we value art and culture in today’s society. Held in conjunction with The Grand Gesture: pianists Sarah Rothenberg and Marilyn Nonken perform The Rite of Spring and Olivier Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen on Saturday, April 13, at the Alexander Kasser Theater. 

Brandon Monokian works professionally as an actor, director, and writer. His original play, Grimm Women, was recently performed at the Kraine Theater in New York City and will play at Philadelphia’s Adrienne Theater April 22 through May 5. For more, follow him on Twitter: @brandonmonokian.

Katlehong Cabaret. (Photo by Annley Boucher.)

In Katlehong Cabaret, presented exclusively in the United States by Peak Performances, all the familiar elements of cabaret are incorporated: an opening number that builds slowly into a full-company anthem, an uplifting love duet, a melancholy torch song, a bejeweled diva, a virtuosic tap solo, physical comedy, audience participation, a self-deprecating emcee, a show-stopping ensemble dance number, even a rousing can-can routine (one that might have made the ladies of the Moulin Rouge high-kick in their graves, but nonetheless…). Although the format is familiar, this is unlike any cabaret come before it, in that the headliner at this nightclub is South Africa herself. 

Via Katlehong Dance is a troupe of performers born out of a youth-outreach program in one of Johannesburg’s apartheid-era townships, from which it takes its name. Out of such districts arose the notion of “pantsula,” a term used initially to describe rebellious youths but that has now come to mean the various elements of culture—fashion, music, dance—that arose during this explosive time and place in South Africa’s history. Almost West Side Story in nature, pantsula movement blends hip-hop and mime and pits individuals or crews in a competition to one-up and out-dance each other with increasingly intricate steps and syncopated, punctuated bodywork. As is the case with many folk-cultural forms, it was an outlet for angry, oppressed kids to channel their frustration. 

Via Katlehong, then, having performed at Peak Performances in 2009 with a show featuring mostly routines of pantsula and gumboot (an older folk dance tradition from the mines, with a more stomp-and-hand-clap aesthetic), ups its own ante in this performance by incorporating more of South Africa’s current culture through modern songs and vignettes. And, thus, a cabaret is born. 

It is an ideal way to showcase an unfamiliar culture though a familiar lens, as well as to demonstrate the performance art of this region and offer a glimpse into the daily life of modern South Africans living in an area still haunted by its political past. The troupe also brilliantly incorporates a few elements of American culture to make their points: most notably, Bill Withers’ 1971 R&B hit, “Ain’t No Sunshine (When She’s Gone).” That song has never been so haunting as when used as a torch song by a woman whose husband is down in the diamond mines, unclear when or if he will return from his work there. 

Despite the weight of its roots, the show itself is an energetic celebration of a South Africa full of light and laughter. Early in the piece, the audience was invited to stand up and dance, and a few members were brought on stage. Following this number, the child in the row in front of me continued to pay tribute for the duration of the show, clapping and stomping along in synchronicity. This was not the fidgeting of a bored kid—her eyes were transfixed on the stage—but rather an outward manifestation of the infectiousness we all felt from this lively piece, unencumbered by the adult rules of theater behavior. 

Pamela Vachon has worked for Lincoln Center Festival and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. She is an occasional dance critic and food writer.

On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God. (Photo by Guido Mencari.)

My first paid acting gig—for $50 and a beer—was Romeo Castellucci’s Hey Girl! (followed closely by a gig walking around dressed as Andy Warhol to promote a Polaroid exhibition). Hey Girl! was an experience I’ll never forget, in part because I keep meeting people who have seen it and are always eager to share their thoughts. Years later, their reactions are stronger than many people’s reactions to shows they have seen only moments before. Passionate reactions, both positive and negative, are what one can expect in response to work by someone like Castellucci, whose abstract yet polarizing images will either turn you on or make you want to run from the theater. I’ve heard reviews from both ends of the spectrum. 

The first of these reactions to Hey Girl!—glowing—came when I was in Shlemiel the First: “That was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen to this day.” A few months later, I was in an eight-hour piece called How to Build a Forest and encountered the opposite reaction. One of the cast members looked me dead in the eye and said, “That was the worst thing I have ever seen.” I was sorry I missed it! Having spent five minutes on stage hitting the ground with a pillow and the rest of the show drinking coffee in the green room, I felt a little clueless about the work that I was in some way a part of. 

Strong reactions shouldn’t be a surprise to Castellucci. When his piece On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God played the Theatre de la Ville in Paris, audience members were pelted with eggs by protestors as they entered the theater. I was thrilled when I found out that this very piece would be coming to the Kasser Theater and that I would finally get the chance to experience his work from an audience perspective (hopefully sans eggs). 

Before the show, I got to sit in on one of the now-regular preshow discussions hosted by Peak Performances, a part of their Sneak Peeks series, and was afforded more insight into Castellucci’s work than my five minutes on stage and other people’s reactions gave me. The Sneak Peek was presented by Annalisa Sacchi, whose literary work focuses on violence on stage in performance art. Sacchi had previously penned a book on Castellucci’s company, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. She described Castellucci’s work and this specific production as an “extremely challenging performance for the spectator” before proceeding to show a clip from Castellucci’s production of Inferno, in which he was attacked by live dogs. Challenging indeed! 

In explaining what she felt was the theme of On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God, she explained, “I think the work is about the human side of Christ.” That felt clear when watching the piece. So much of what Jesus Christ represents is sacrifice. A man who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. No matter what you believe, there is power in that. In Castellucci’s piece, you see a man sacrifice himself to care for his ailing father as his father soils himself three times throughout the play; all the while, an odor funnels into the theater, making you feel like you are in the room with them. You see the father’s body sacrifice itself to the natural order of the world as it deteriorates rapidly on stage. As the son cleans him, the scenario becoming more frustrating each time, a gigantic painting of Jesus looks down at them—and at me, and at everyone in the audience. The painting was created to be staring at you no matter where you are sitting. It’s almost as if the son of God is looking at us as we, the audience, react to this extreme sight. 

Throughout the Sneak Peek, Sacchi frequently used the word “shame” to describe what the play was about. You see the shame of the father as he loses control of his once young and capable body, as well as the shame of the son as he struggles with his own frustrations at the ever-mounting difficulty of taking care of his father. 

There is a moment early on in the show when the son gives his father some pills and, after he washes them down with water, gently wipes his mouth. It made my eyes fill with tears, in part because I saw my father and grandfather in them, but also because it was such a simple, beautiful, natural gesture of love. In today’s world of chaos, we constantly forget the beauty in simplicity. This gesture would become increasingly grand as the father in the play loses control of his bowels, and his son has to wipe and clean him. Watching this, I was absolutely sobbing. What a love you have to have for someone to do that for them. 

The play seamlessly moves from a natural exchange between father and son to a surreal series of events in which the father sits in his bed, which is now covered in his bodily waste. After the son exits, several young children pull rocks out of their backpacks and throw them at the giant painting of Jesus. A man who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world, now being attacked. As the children leave, the stage now covered in rocks, the painting of Jesus begins to cry a dark substance that looks like blood. I cried tears. This image of children throwing rocks at Jesus was so moving because, to me, it represented a loss of innocence. We are born with our parents doing everything for us, and, as this piece shows, we tend to go out the same way—only now our children are the ones taking care of us. In between, there are moments when we lash out at the people who care for us most—at a man who died for our sins or at our parents, who just want what’s best for us. We don’t know we are hurting them, but we are. It took a gigantic bleeding painting of Jesus for me to recognize this. 

Brandon Monokian works professionally as an actor, director, and writer. His original play, Grimm Women, was recently performed at the Kraine Theater in New York City and will play at Philadelphia’s Adrienne Theater April 22 through May 5. For more, follow him on Twitter: @brandonmonokian.

On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God. (Photo by Klaus Lefebvre.)

Imagine, if you will, a casting notice: “Local children wanted for Italian theater production containing adult themes on aging and illness. Children will be expected to throw rocks at a Renaissance portrait of Jesus. Please bring backpack.” Such was one challenge for Peak Performances in presenting Romeo Castellucci’s On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God. Six children, aged 10 to 13, were nonetheless recruited; most were children of local artists or academics with relationships to either Peak Performances or Montclair State.  I had an interesting vantage point among all this, in that I was hired to serve as a “wrangler” for the local kids—to be an extra point of contact for their parents and an extra backstage adult ensuring that the kids were where they needed to be when they needed to be there. I knew little else about the show when I agreed to the gig. 

The first rehearsal began with a talk by Silvano, a member of Castellucci’s company, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, who would be directing the kids throughout the weekend. It would seem that having an accent helps when addressing fidgety youth—the kids listened intently for a good 45 minutes, occasionally finishing Silvano’s sentences when he struggled with a word in English. Before any rocks were thrown, the children needed to understand what the show was about. Silvano spoke of the difference between an image of something and the actual something that the image represented. He patiently explained the process of an old man losing his bowel control, and there was nary a nervous twitter from any of the preadolescents in response to his numerous mentions of “poo” (as much evidence as I needed of the presence of a higher power in the room). He showed them both the fecal matter (a concoction of oatmeal, chocolate, cornmeal, and coffee) and the mechanisms used on stage to produce the effect.  The kids regarded all with thoughtfulness and quizzicality. 

He then described the children’s scene itself: “Then comes out these beautiful, intelligent, energetic, brave kids…” The portrait at which they were to launch their rocks was one by Antonello da Messina; it formed a larger-than-life backdrop that overlooked the entire show with its tender but troubled gaze. “Your actions are not ones of violence,” Silvano explained, “but of energy.” It would be a kinetic protest enacted by children just at the precipice of their own burgeoning sense of disenfranchisement from authority, whether parental, religious, or otherwise. When the first rocks were finally launched, they hit the portrait with a mighty boom—first a solo throw, followed shortly by a cacophony of simultaneous launches. No one was directed to behave with rage. They each entered the scene with quiet contemplation; once all their rocks were thrown, the children regarded the unaffected portrait with awe and respect before leaving the stage one by one. 

This is a piece of theater wholly unlike the productions of Real Inspector Hound and Oklahoma! in which these kids might otherwise perform during their middle school and high school careers. An old man repeatedly soils himself on stage, the remains of which are present when the kids take their places. The audience was often so stunned at the end of the show as to barely applaud. (“They’re not clapping,” one of the girls remarked to me. “Some theater makes you think, not cheer,” I explained.) This is theater that has been protested in Europe.  After Saturday night’s show in Montclair, one audience member vehemently insisted, “This is a show about hate.” Castellucci sensitively countered by outlining how actions can have a reverse meaning—for example, the betrayal of Jesus by Judas with a kiss. The screaming at an old man for his declining ability to control his bowels, the throwing of rocks at an image of Christ—these are manifestations of frustration, the type that can exist only when there is extreme devotion to what or who is most frustrating us. 

The parents were invited to be present for every moment of the production, during rehearsals and performances, whether in the audience or in the green room backstage. Discussions I had with parents before and after each performance revealed the extent to which their kids were not merely stepping on and off stage and doing their bit. They were also considering what it all meant—their personal strategies for accepting the difficulty of the actions they performed, their feelings about God and aging, and their excitement to return to the theater the next night to stand among the excrement and launch their stones. It is unlikely that Justin Bieber songs and Angry Birds games played on iDevices promote such nuanced conversations between parents and preteens. 

It is a testament to the company and to their belief in their work that they took such care to engage the children and their parents in the production in a way that ensured their agency and understanding. If at any point the children or their parents had been made to feel like merely an ancillary local chorus, they surely would have pulled out when the feces (literal, in this case) started hitting the fan. 

Just before the children took their places on stage each night, Silvano bent to each of them, looked them in the eye, and gently tapped a fist to their hearts while speaking the word “courage.” Initially, I thought this was merely a “break a leg” gesture. As the weekend progressed, it became clearer that the courage he aimed to instill was not merely about an ability to go on stage and be in front of an audience; it was about an ability to be part of something important and provocative and to handle that responsibility with strength. 

Pamela Vachon has worked for Lincoln Center Festival and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. She is an occasional dance critic and food writer.

Richard Alston. (Photo by Hugo Glendinning.)

On Thursday, December 13th, Peak Performances hosted the second of its new Sneak Peeks series, in which audiences are afforded the opportunity to listen to presentations by and interact with artists or experts on the piece they are about to see. I was lucky enough to witness the first, a preshow talk by Nancy Dalva, scholar in residence at the Merce Cunningham Trust. The experience was so informative and beneficial to my experience as a witness to the L.A. Dance Project’s performance that I was thrilled to be able to attend the latest Sneak Peek, this time for the Richard Alston Dance Company, who would be presenting three dances: Roughcut, Unfinished Business, and the American premiere of A Ceremony of Carols. A Ceremony of Carols would feature the Prima Voce choir under the direction of John J. Cali School of Music faculty member Heather J. Buchanan. 

For the preshow discussion, artistic director and choreographer Richard Alston was joined by Buchanan to discuss the evening’s closing piece, A Ceremony of Carols. The talk primarily focused on Alston’s work as a choreographer and how it is influenced by the music to which his dancers perform. It was interesting to learn how this differed from the work of Merce Cunningham, who, according to Nancy Dalva, would create his dance as separate from the music; Alston also mentioned this as he spoke about studying with Cunningham. Alston’s admiration and respect for Cunningham couldn’t have been more clear, and it was fascinating to hear about—but even though he studied with Cunningham, their work and processes seemed to be from two different universes. “Merce was one of the most important people in my dance life, except I just couldn’t dance in silence, and when I was in rehearsals I just couldn’t cope,” he explained, referring to Cunningham’s legendary practice of rehearsing the movement separate from the music, often introducing the music to the dancers only at show time. “The music would arrive for the performance.” He went on to explain that his work and choreography come first and foremost from the musical score his dancers are performing to. “The starting point to my choreography is music. When I was a dancer, music was what made me want to move.” 

Heather Buchanan spoke about her work with the choral ensemble used in A Ceremony of Carols and how their work complemented that of their dance performance partners. “The first thing that struck me was the language of the movement and how that meshed with the musical language. Musicians and dancers share a common thread, in that we’re both kinesthetic creatures,” said Buchanan. “As I was preparing the singers for this, I said to them there are a lot of musical details we obviously need to take care of, but many of those details are important to the dancers because of the way they will respond to the sound. When the music works best it’s because it’s rhythmic, and because it’s breath driven, and it’s coordinated in a unified way.” 

The performance opened with Roughcut, a piece in which Alston’s love for the music was clear from the moment the performance began. The piece featured Steve Reich’s “New York Counterpoint” for clarinet and tape and “Electric Counterpoint” for guitar and tape. The recorded clarinets started to play, releasing waves of exciting, up-tempo music, all while the audience was looking at a black curtain, which gave the music time to inform and transport the audience into the world of the piece. The curtain then opened and the music played on—but the audience still was not looking at dancers but rather at a blank stage, which gave them the opportunity to simply focus on Reich’s energetic recording. Then the dance began. As the clarinet seemed to bounce off the walls, the dancers flawlessly bounced through the space, creating a visual world that was saturated with movement but never felt like it was too much. Their movement was remarkably kinesthetic, reacting to and in tune with not only the music but each other and creating a world in which music and movement exploded. The dancers were playful and delight filled; they illuminated the empty stage with just their bodies and infectious energy. 

The final two performances of the evening, Unfinished Business and A Ceremony of Carols, were both presented with live music, and the effect was extraordinary. For Unfinished Business, the stage was set with only a piano (played beautifully by Jason Ridgway). The complex dance movements and the simple stage set, containing only the piano playing gorgeous music by Mozart and Busoni (Piano Sonata no. 15 in F major, K. 533, and Giga, Blolero e Variazione, respectively), were the perfect combination. Although the performance was perfectly polished, there is a feeling that comes from the combination of live music and live dance; every aspect feels like it is happening for the first time—and, in a sense, it is, since no two performances are ever exactly the same. 

As A Ceremony of Carols began, the live choir and harp (played by André Tarantiles) created the musical world while the dancers entered, creating an epic feeling as these artistic ensembles combined forces. One of the most entrancing moments was when soprano Jessica Eucker performed a solo during the “That Yongë Child” carol, displaying a combination of polished technique and raw emotional storytelling capability rarely paired together on stage, singing, “That yongë child when it gan weep, with song she lulled him asleep.” In truth, her song made me want to weep—it was that beautiful. The full ensemble of female vocalists was haunting, and I could have spent hours experiencing this divine combination of music and movement that physicalized the emotion and dynamics produced by the musicians. Everything Alston said about his musically inspired technique was both evident and effective. 

The Richard Alston Dance Company and the Prima Voce choir created an atmosphere of beautiful emotion and exuberance. Presented at a time in the world when the need to bear witness to something joy filled is as necessary as breathing, the work was, hands down, one of my favorite of many awe-inspiring experiences at the Alexander Kasser Theater. 

Brandon Monokian works professionally as an actor, director, and writer. His original play Grimm Women was recently performed at the Kraine Theater. For more, follow him on Twitter: @brandonmonokian.

Winterbranch. (Photo by Stephanie Berger.)

Peak Performances has launched a new preshow discussion series called “Sneak Peeks.” The series is an opportunity for audience members to interact with professionals who either are involved directly with the production or are experts on some area of the work presented. The first Sneak Peek premiered Thursday, October 25th, in advance of the regional debut of Benjamin Millepied’s company, L.A. Dance Project. It featured speaker Nancy Dalva, scholar in residence at the Merce Cunningham Trust, which holds and administers the rights to the 65-year catalogue of work by choreographer Merce Cunningham. In addition to Moving Parts, a new piece by Millepied, and Quintett, by William Forsythe, Cunningham’s 1964 piece Winterbranch was performed by the L.A. Dance Project—the first time the work has been performed by a company other than Cunningham’s. 

During Dalva’s talk, I was most moved by her profound passion and commitment to Cunningham’s work. “A lot has come from Merce, but nothing has gone past him. He’s been dead for two years, and he’s still in the avant-garde.” Dalva’s work for the trust includes writing essays, researching, and managing social media, including a Facebook page with some 10,000 followers. Before she began her work as the trust scholar, she spent four years working for the Cunningham Foundation, where she created a Web series, Mondays With Merce (16 episodes available online at mercecunningham.org); in it, she interviewed Cunningham on his life and work, as well as those he worked with and inspired, and filmed the company in their studio and around the world. 

Dalva described Winterbranch as a gritty, raw, uncomfortable dance, with nontraditional theatrical lighting by the artist Robert Rauschenberg. When the dance was created in 1964, the lighting was different every time it was performed. Flashlights would shine into the audience, creating the feeling of a car light shown in their eyes. Although still safe for performers, the way it was constructed created a visually dangerous world for the audience. Dalva explained that patrons often left during Winterbranch, largely because of La Monte Young’s accompanying soundscape, created by rubbing wood on Chinese gongs and glass ashtrays on mirrors. Dalva then declared that “If nobody leaves tonight, I would hope you would be disappointed,” explaining that followers of Cunningham felt as though people leaving his work was a part of the “Cunningham experience.” Cunningham followers would not be disappointed that night! As I looked to my right at one moment during the performance, a woman at the end of my row literally climbed over a railing to get out of her seat so that she could make it to an upper unoccupied level and rush out the theater door. 

Winterbranch was indeed dark and daring—but, I must confess, I was looking forward to a much noisier and riskier presentation than what was delivered. There were a few flashlights; however, the entire stage was usually dimly lit throughout. Although grating, the soundtrack to the piece was set at a moderate volume. I was hoping for something darker and more raucous than what L.A. Dance Project presented. It was still an excellent performance by the technically gifted dancers, and it is wonderful that a dance piece that is such an important part of dance history was shared with a new audience. 

Although Dalva spoke primarily about Cunningham and his incredible body of work, she also shared her thoughts on the other two pieces in the program. On Milliped’s Moving Parts, she spoke of the gigantic, moving set pieces that were transported around the stage by the dancers. “What if you thought of it as action painting?” she asked. “There’s something magic about this.” I saw the moving art, as she described it, as the giant screens zoomed around the stage. Although the screens certainly maneuvered quite a bit, the most captivating use of them was at the very beginning, when they moved so slowly you barely realized they were moving at all; it created a feeling as if this world of color and excitement were literally closing in on the performers. The dancers bustled about the stage at light speed, showing off every physical trick in their movement vocabulary. The piece was movement saturated, but, like the initial moment in which the screens just barely moved at all, the most interesting point of the dance came when all the dancers lay in a pile together on the floor. Watching them breathe and simply exist together was stunning. 

The third and most beautifully executed piece of the evening was Forsythe’s Quintett. Dalva gave some clues to the dance’s narrative, explaining how the piece was created while Forsythe’s wife was terminally ill with cancer. Quintett is set to the simple but devastatingly beautiful “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet,” a prayer repeated over and over to music by Gavin Bryars. Although the events surrounding the dance were tragic, the dance itself was not, feeling more like a buoyant celebration of life and passion. Out of all three performances, it was this dance in which the performers seemed most connected not only to the physical and emotional story but to each other. 

“In modernism, the journey matters just as much as the arrival,” Dalva said. Great theater, dance, and discussions stay with you long after their conclusion and set you out on a journey. Since Dalva’s Sneak Peek talk, I’ve taken time to delve into the resources made available by the Cunningham Trust and found them completely inspiring in the writing and theater work I’ve done (all completely outside the dance world). Researching Cunningham’s simple, “fact-based” dance, as Dalva called it, is an inspiration to any dancer, writer, theater maker, or creative professional of any kind, really transporting one back to the basics. “It takes a certain bravery to eliminate decoration,” said legendary dancer Valda Setterfield in episode 11 of Mondays With Merce. In the auto-tuned, airbrushed world that the arts has evolved into, raw and naked fact-based anything is a welcome relief from the glossy perfection we are so often presented, which is not based in fact but rather in complete and total fiction. In watching Mondays With Merce and hearing the words and musings of some of the greatest physical artists in history or in reading Dalva’s essays (check out “The Way of Merce”), we can look at the life of a man who created a performance style that was truly novel and, most importantly, honest. 

Don’t miss the next Sneak Peek: December 13, 6:00pm. Choreographer Richard Alston and Montclair State’s Heather J. Buchanan talk about the music of Benjamin Britten and more in this intimate conversation before the American premiere of A Ceremony of Carols, performed by the Richard Alston Dance Company and Prima Voce choir. (Sneak Peeks take place in the Alexander Kasser Theater lobby and include free pizza and snacks!) 

Brandon Monokian works professionally as an actor, director, and writer. His original play Grimm Women will be performed at the Kraine Theater, December 12th-15th. For more, follow him on Twitter: @brandonmonokian.

Quintett. (Photo by Stephanie Berger.)

Benjamin Millepied, a French choreographer with a largely balletic background and lately popularized by his work on the psychological dance thriller Black Swan, has assembled a company of six boundlessly athletic and sexy young dancers capable of tackling the challenge before them: an evening of three works representing the spectrum, historically and stylistically, of contemporary dance. The choice of these three pieces—Millepied’s own Moving Parts (2012), Merce Cunningham’s Winterbranch (1964), and William Forsythe’s Quintett (1993)—and the way they collectively demonstrate what contemporary dance is capable of make for a highly successful evening, one that not only exhibits varied styles of movement within the canon but provides an interesting examination of how certain attendant technical elements of contemporary dance performance—music, lights, scenery—contribute to its overall spirit as an art form. 

A dancer in the company I used to work for once offered me the following wisdom after I lamented the lack of alignment between dancers and music in a performance: “It’s not always about the 5-6-7-8.” All three pieces in this performance exhibit a loose, fluid relationship between the movement and the soundtrack, something I’ve come to view as a hallmark of very successful contemporary choreography. Nico Muhly’s original score for Moving Parts employs a recorded organ soundtrack over which a live clarinet and violin are played. Occasionally, these instruments provide something that could be perceived as a tempo or metronomic effect; more often, they merely provide sustained pedal points that give the dance full freedom of movement, uninhibited by the tyranny of the 5-6-7-8. The title of Millepied’s piece—Moving Parts—is a triple entendre: the movement often represents something intricately mechanical, with highly technical interplay between weaving or interlocking parts; three large painted set pieces on casters are literally moved around by the dancers, to the extent that you are watching nine bodies, not just six, engaged in the dance; and, despite the piece’s technicality, parts are moving—in particular, in a duet between two men. It is rare to see a male duet come off as tender rather than as a display of competition or athleticism. 

Cunningham’s Winterbranch begins in silence, a logistical challenge to a post-intermission audience, and then arbitrarily comes in screaming halfway with a piece by La Monte Young called “2 Sounds”—in which one sound appears to be (as a young lady behind me helpfully pointed out) “animals dying,” and the other seems to be a trombone played by someone who doesn’t much know how to play the trombone. Winterbranch is challenging to watch, both because it represents that which those who would be hesitant to attend a performance of modern dance would snottily pronounce “too weird,” and also because the lighting employed in this piece is not built to be illuminating. It calls into question the degree to which lights are important to theater of any kind. Lights show us where to look and often set a mood. With lighting that is mostly flashlights and the occasional sweeping searchlight, actually seeing what is happening on stage in Winterbranch is haphazard at best. John Cage was Merce Cunningham’s life partner—as he is to “accidental music,” Robert Rauschenberg (credited for the original lighting scheme) must be to “accidental lighting.” 

This is the stuff of Warhol-era absurdist theater: for example, if a woman needs to begin her solo on stage right, rather than walk on stage and take her mark, isn’t it more interesting if she lies down on stage left and is transported via burlap sack by two other dancers to that mark? And does a dancer standing stationary with arms raised for one minute while various flashlight beams illuminate her actually count as a dance solo? Winterbranch is dance not intended for mass appeal, evidenced by a number of people who walked out and one aggressive comment yelled just at the final blackout. In response, the audience redoubled its applause effort. The dancers deserved it. It isn’t the kind of piece you want to see again and again, but it succeeds on a much different level in how strong a reaction it provokes. 

In my former work with a New York City–based contemporary dance company, I watched creations in progress by numerous emerging choreographers who defined themselves as being of a William Forsythe pedigree. Though I was new to the dance world, I learned quickly that “Forsythe” is one of those terms in dance that is best spoken in a hushed, reverent tone. Just prior to curtain on Quintett, I realized that I had never seen one of his works. Just after the curtain, I realized that this meant I had inadvertently been trying to learn a dance language without first studying the alphabet. Forsythe’s work shows how we got from the abject oddity of Winterbranch to the ballet-cum-contemporary aesthetic of Moving Parts. Musically, Quintett relies on 16 looped bars of a spiritual called “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet,” performed with sincerity, if not vocal virtuosity, by Gavin Bryars. By its hundredth loop (there are at least that many), you are saturated with an overwhelming feeling of the power of faith over adversity. The five dancers continually pair off such that, by the end, you’ve seen every possible pairing involving two different dancers. The movement is accessible (they still lift and spin each other) but so original (they do so in ways that defy imagination), and you ask yourself not “Why is this so weird?” but “What makes this so wonderful?” 

Benjamin Millepied has built a small but powerful young dance company. His choreography is worth seeing, for sure, but it is his power as curator that makes me eager to see where they will go from here. 

Pamela Vachon has worked for Lincoln Center Festival and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. She is an occasional dance critic and food writer.

Lauren Worsham in Dog Days (photo by James Matthew Daniel).

Dog Days, a new opera by composer David T. Little and librettist Royce Vavrek, launched the 2012-13 Peak Performances season. To kick off this year’s Student Forum series, Montclair State dramaturgy students respond with their own take on what critics described as “formidable,” “unforgettable,” and “unsettling.” The students were asked to compare the performance to the original story by Judy Budnitz and to analyze how the story worked as an opera. Read on for perspectives by Liz Lehman (below) and Mia Zanette. Thanks to our collaborators at Montclair State’s Creative Research Center for sharing these analyses as part of an ongoing effort to showcase writing by Montclair State undergraduate students. 

After trying and trying and trying to imagine Judy Budnitz’s story as an opera, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t, and I’m so very grateful that I couldn’t, because experiencing this production with no expectations or preconceived ideas about it allowed me to be taken through so many wonderful surprises. At the very least, I was expecting it to be presented as a traditional opera—or not. Either or. I couldn’t imagine an effective middle ground. Thankfully, David T. Little figured that bit out himself. 

It turned out that each performer was indeed a classically trained singer, with a larger-than-life voice and quivering vibrato. Before seeing the performance, I was afraid that this choice would be too incongruous with such a small, simple story, but any misgivings I had about the medium were put to rest within the first few minutes of the opera. The production opens cold, with the father booming “Get me my rifle!”—and that is just immediately acceptable. You don’t question why the performers are singing, because that’s simply how they communicate. It does not seem at all out of place. 

Also impressively seamless is the integration of new technology into this production. In act 2, Lauren Worsham, who plays the young daughter, dances with a mirror for at least 10 minutes. This would be impressive on its own, but to make it even more challenging they fixed a camera to the mirror, which fed a live recording of the actor’s face onto an enormous screen above the set. This results in two scenes playing out at the same time, in the same space, with the same performer. Below the screen, we catch vague glimpses of a young girl admiring her developing figure in the mirror. On screen, however, we are treated to every nuance of her facial expressions, and this paints a different picture entirely. We are forced to watch, point blank, as an innocent child comes completely undone, so injured by her isolation that she looks for beauty in her own starvation. It is truly chilling, not to mention brilliantly presented through a medium one would rarely see in an opera. 

Most striking of all, however, is the opera’s epilogue. I was sincerely nervous for the opera to come to this conclusion, because I was enjoying it so much up until that point and also because the ambiguous ending of the original story is so perfect. I was mostly afraid that having an outcome picked for me would be too safe, too anticlimactic. I don’t think I have ever been more wrong about anything. 

The gunshot fired at the dog activates this stark new reality as the fluorescent lights are brought up over the action unfolding onstage. The orchestra drops out completely, and tuneless mechanical drones begin to hum to life. Meanwhile, Lisa is left to wash her mother’s dead body, which, as the theater gradually becomes louder and brighter, is absolutely electric to watch. The anticipation mounted in a way that is typically broken within a few seconds, but it just kept building until I actually began inventing terrible ways for it all to finally collapse. We were all sitting there wondering whether Lisa would soon resort to cannibalism, like the rest of her living family, or whether she would die as well, when all that was being played out on stage was the simple action of cleansing. The “noise aria” instilled an acute paranoia in me, the equivalent of which I had never experienced in a theater before. 

There’s suspense, and then there’s the climax of Dog Days, which could very well put you on the verge of physical illness. After 12 full minutes of deafening noise, blinding lights, and utterly horrifying events, it came almost too close to being too much to take but ended up breaking at exactly the right time. If I hadn’t enjoyed the rest of the opera so much, I’d think it was manipulative, but it was handled too intelligently to come off that way. You could tell how specifically the noise was engineered and how it played off of the performers’ energy in the live space. You have to appreciate how risky it is to end an opera with a totally wordless 10-minute sequence like that, but in this case it was so purposeful and fitting that I was left shaking in my seat after the performance. 

Dog Days is a triumph in more than one way. On one hand, it just goes to show how limitless the potential is for adaptations in theater. I am now totally convinced that you could adapt anything into an opera, and it will work as long as you find ways to make it work. However, what struck me as the most important part of this production was that it brought innovation to an art form that hasn’t seen much development over the past few decades. The creators of Dog Days carefully examined the different ways theater is expanding and reinventing itself and transfused those innovative ideas with the aesthetic of classical opera. It’s so reassuring to see how committed talented, creative new artists are to reviving less-explored media in live theatre. At the very least, it keeps things interesting. 

Liz Lehman is a Theatre Studies major in the College of the Arts at Montclair State. This excerpt is from an essay written for the class Introduction to Dramaturgy, taught by Dr. Neil Baldwin, fall 2012.