By RACHEL TESS

How can you introduce Meredith Monk? Bruce Brubaker faced this daunting task when she visited Juilliard on November 5 to be interviewed in his InterArts seminar. Singers and musicians may know Monk for her exceptional instrument, her broad and unconventional use of the voice, her creation of an extended vocal technique, which allows her freedom from traditional text, range, pitch, and timbre. Dancers watch videos of Monk's early installations in Dawn Lille's dance history class, and musical selections from her various works pop up at many Dance Division studio workshops. While Monk has an honorary doctorate from Juilliard, no department can really claim her. You cannot call Monk a singer, a dancer, or an actress alone. She does not just compose music, nor does she just make dances, direct films, or create theater. As she herself has written, her nearly four-decade-long career has been dedicated to creating "an art that breaks down the boundaries between the disciplines. An art, which in turn becomes a metaphor for opening up thought, perception, experience. An art that reaches toward emotion we have no words for that we barely remember. An art that affirms the world of feeling in a time and society where feelings are in danger of being eliminated."

Meredith Monk speaks to Bruce Brubaker’s InterArts Seminar, as he listens intently. (Photo by Guy Piddington)

Meredith Monk describes herself as a fourth-generation singer. Her great-grandfather was a cantor in Russia, her grandfather a bass-baritone, and her mother a singer for CBS. She learned to relate movement to music through Dalcroze Eurythmics, in a class she attended with the likes of Juilliard's own Liz Keen and Jane Kosminsky. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1964, having studied dance, music, and theater, and went on to create new opera, musical-theater works, films, installations, and recordings with her own groups, Meredith Monk/The House and Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble. She is credited with creating an "extended vocal technique" and is a pioneer in interdisciplinary performance. Her biography has attained short-story status in length, with listings of awards that include a MacArthur Genius Award, a "Bessie" for sustained creative achievement, 16 ASCAP Awards for musical composition, and the 1992 Dance Magazine Award.

Liz Keen, who teaches composition in the Dance Division and is a contemporary of Meredith Monk, describes her as an artist with antennae to society. "Meredith has a quaint way of looking at time," says Keen; "her pieces have enormous depth and are related to culture." A perfect example of this (which Monk played for the interview) is her latest musical-theater work, Mercy, a collaboration with visual artist Ann Hamilton that premiered at the American Dance Festival in 2001. While the Juilliard audience did not have the pleasure of seeing the accompanying movement and video portion of this work, the room was lulled by the swirling tones of the music. Monk explained her intent to have the "audience surrounded by sound," employing the idea of sound as sculpture.

Monk describes her work in terms of her goals to create "an art that is inclusive rather than exclusive—that is expansive, whole, human, multidimensional. An art that cleanses the senses, that offers insight, feeling, magic, that allows the public to perhaps see familiar things in a new, fresh way, that gives them the possibility of feeling more alive." She insists that multidisciplinary art "translates better to today's complex, media-inundated audience," and is adamantly opposed to the segregation of the different performing arts. Too often, says Monk, "art is simplified, packaged, and sold in Western society." In her own work, she aspires to "an art that seeks to re-establish the unity existing in music, theater and dance, the wholeness that is found in cultures where performing-arts practice is considered a spiritual discipline with healing and transformative power."

The hour-and-a-half–long interview was as broad in scope as Meredith Monk's ambitions as an artist. Prompted by questions from Brubaker, the students, and faculty, she covered a range of subjects from film to music, dance to composition, and creation to inspiration. What was perhaps most enlightening and memorable, however, was Monk's ability to tackle all of these things through process.

Monk's process is a highly intuitive one. She emphasizes the importance of "emptying in order to create." She likens the creation of ideas for a work to the "gathering of vegetables." As she begins creating, she places them in a pot of water on the stove, "lets them simmer, boil, and finally cook down." What's left is the final form of the work, the elements that will communicate its essence. She makes a clear distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative performance, placing value on "ambiguity—that there can be more than one choice for the audience." In this way, her work asks the audience to participate as the final element of a piece.

Speaking to a room filled with inquisitive dancers, singers, musicians, actors, and composers—who spend nearly all of their time separated in different departments, often on different floors of the School—Monk's appearance was very refreshing. Her commitment to exploration, "for better or for worse," is what keeps her work alive. In the final 15 minutes of the interview, in response to a question from an eager student, Monk asserted confidently that improvisation, exploration, and departure or expansion from traditional training will not hurt your technique … something to bear in mind as we practice the classics diligently.

Rachel Tess is a fourth-year dance student.