Tag Archives: pattern

Riegger’s “New Dance” and the Patterned Whole

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As I reflect further on last week’s rehearsal – the first we’ve had in the auditorium of Goodhart Hall – I realize that the beauty of the “wholeness” I appreciated in watching Steps in the Street performed on the stage was derived in part from my experience of the rhythms and patterns of the work in this new, elevated (both literally and figuratively) context.

Over the course of the day the dancers rehearsed the piece in its entirety with the music many times, becoming more closely acquainted with the mixed meters of Wallingford Riegger’s modernist composition. Because the form of the musical score makes counting each measure more complicated the dancers have learned to rely at times on the sound of each other’s steps to cue transitions in movement (as opposed to the beat of the music), so an entrance may fluidly follow the preceding exit. The way the dancers have made adjustments together, as an ensemble, to negotiate this dissonance – between the rhythmic patterns of the sound and those of the movement – highlights, once again, the themes of interdependence and relatedness that exist within this piece. The dancers’ reliance on one another exposes the way in which each entrance relies on an exit in order to continue the dance.

Without having my attention drawn to these structural details, I wouldn’t have seen the delicate balance that exists through Steps in the Street – the elegant way its unique parts together create a cohesive whole.

Listen to Riegger’s musical score and then imagine keeping time to this music while contracting all of your muscles and spinning backwards on tiptoe!

 

The End of The Beginning

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This past Saturday marked both the first opportunity the dancers had to rehearse on the stage of the McPherson Auditorium in Goodhart Hall, where the performances will be held, as well as the last day they will spend rehearsing with Jennifer Conley before she returns for the performances at the end of April. My greatest take-away from this “end of the beginning” was an experience of wholeness – I guess it could be considered the spirit of the mass more completely accessed right before my eyes. By this I mean I felt a strengthened bond between the dancers of the ensemble that was evident in their movements. I also found a new appreciation for the dance itself as a complete entity, instead of a series of deconstructed parts – and this was, I’m sure, influenced by both the unity of the dancers and the way my view was framed by the stage.

After the warm-up Jennifer had the dancers focus on some of the more challenging entrances – moments that are difficult due to a combination of exacting form, limited time and complex staging. So, they lined up and moved across the stage, row by row, back and forth.

Here they come - Sofia, Alexandra Adams, Joie, Michelle - rehearsing spiral lunges. The next row is prepared to follow, with arms in place and hands cupped.

Here they come – Sofia, Alexandra Adams, Joie, Michelle – rehearsing spiral lunges. The next row is prepared to follow, with arms in place and hands cupped.

 

The dancers rehearse the "zombie walk" while Jennifer [far right] uses Joie to demonstrate the sensation of opposing forces this movement should conjure. Here, the dancers are pushing forward through air thick with remembered sorrows.

The dancers rehearse the “zombie walk” while Jennifer [far right] uses Joie to demonstrate the sensation of opposing forces this movement should conjure. Here, the dancers are pushing forward through air thick with remembered sorrows.

Below, the beautiful bourrées (for which I provided a portion of the staging map here), which require the dancers to twirl backwards in an interweaving pattern across the stage, covering a significant amount of space very quickly.

Preparation (anticipation!)

Preparation (anticipation!)

And then but a blur.

Then but a blur.

And quickly following:

Prepare...

Prepare…

 

And go!

And go!

 

Tapping into the Spirit

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This past weekend was the first and longest of the three weekends that Jennifer Conley will spend with us at Bryn Mawr, teaching choreography and setting staging. She will return for dress and technical rehearsals just before the April performances.

After the three hours spent in the studio on Friday evening – the goal of which, post-introductions, was to stage the first and second sections of the piece – the dancers returned at 10 am on Saturday morning and rehearsed for six hours on both Saturday and Sunday.

Steps in the Street is only about six minutes long, but every moment of this dance is an athletic feat requiring great amounts of strength and control. There are these jumps, for instance, that reoccur throughout the piece that I have tried to practice myself. I cannot make one decent looking jump. In Steps these jumps are done in rapid, rhythmic succession, sometimes for many counts at a time. I had to leave during rehearsal, in Pembroke Studio, on Saturday and as I walked outside, underneath Pembroke Arch, I could still hear the pounding of twenty-two feet landing over and over and over again.

Heather McGinley, Sevin Ceviker, Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Jacqueline Bulnes, and Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch of the Graham Company in Martha Graham's "Sketches from 'Chronicle'" (Photo by Costas / Copyright Costas)

Heather McGinley, Sevin Ceviker, Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Jacqueline Bulnes, and Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch of the Graham Company in Martha Graham’s “Sketches from ‘Chronicle'”
(Photo by Costas / Copyright Costas)

 

In her autobiography, Blood Memory, Martha Graham wrote:

Before I began to dance I trained myself to do four hundred jumps in five minutes by the clock.

 

 

 

The six minutes of Steps are made up of a series of entrances and exits, so Jennifer is for the most part teaching the choreography and setting the staging simultaneously. Though the dance requires great physical strength this is not immediately apparent to the viewer – there are no show-off-y tricks – rather the power of this work is derived from sustained rhythms  and repetition within the choreography and the complex patterns created by the entrances and exits of the dancers en masse.

Jennifer's color-coded map shows part of the staging of one particularly complex entrance

Jennifer’s color-coded map shows part of the staging for one particularly complex entrance

By the end of the day on Sunday everyone was, understandably, wiped out. Knee pads were being worn on a number of different joints and I noticed some winces and limps I hadn’t before. I had left in the middle of the day and returned for the final hour of rehearsal. The dancers were preparing to do a full run-through of all but the final section of the dance with the music.

Jennifer had been encouraging the dancers to “tap into the spirit” of the dance – like the act of “intermingling” I referenced here – this means sharing something with those who have danced these steps before you while at the same time bringing your own spirit to the work in order to keep it alive. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is what I felt happen during that run-through on Sunday afternoon. It was as though the psychic space Jennifer had been preparing the dancers for since Friday had just been conjured. The air in the studio seemed to vibrate with some greater shared energy – like something had just clicked into place – a unity and a new found familiarity between the dancers, the history and the work. It was a little spooky and very beautiful.