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4 Visiting Artists Offer a Choreographic Collage By SARAH ADRIANCE
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Fourth-year dancers rehearse a new work by Robert Battle, titled Mass. (Photo by Rosalie O’Connor)
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For more information on music commissioned for the fourth-year dancers' work, see .
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To describe all four guest choreographers for New Dances at Juilliard Edition 2004, Dance Division Director Lawrence Rhodes uses the same word—not for lack of an adequate vocabulary, but because he feels the word accurately illustrates them all: integrity. Rhodes had a long list of artists to choose from, but feels he has found a good match for the distinctive personality of each class, taking into account the choreographers they worked with last year and finding an appropriate new experience for them.
For the audience, New Dances is a rare chance to see four premieres from four diverse artists, whose work would not normally be seen on the same program. The four gifted choreographers whose works will be performed in the Juilliard Theater this month come from a range of dance lineages. All have successful companies, all have won prestigious awards, and all have earned the admiration of critics and audiences alike. They are artists with strikingly unique voices and they work in markedly unique ways, but all are dedicated to involving the students in the creative process.Janis Breener's T-shirt says "Innovative Artists in Their Natural Environment"—a sentiment that perfectly describes the room. The first-year dancers are improvising in groups of three, coming up with movement that might eventually make its way into the work. Two dancers create a structured space that the third dancer moves within. The dancers are relaxed and taking risks with each other; occasionally a particularly spectacular movement passage elicits "oohs" and "ahhs" from the observing dancers.
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| Janis Brenner demonstrates a move for the class of 2008. (Photo by Rosalie O'Connor) |
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Brenner is the artistic director of Janis Brenner & Dancers, a company formed in 1985 that has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and internationally (including twice on a U.S. State Department American Artists Abroad grant). Brenner, a former soloist with Annabelle Gamson's company and the Murray Louis Dance Company, has been performing with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble since 1990. Buzz magazine wrote in 1997: "Dancer, choreographer, singer—Brenner is that rare contemporary performer who can do it all." Brenner sings in rehearsal, and it is not at all unpleasant; her strong, sweet voice carries the dancers easily through her movement.The first-year dancers have known each other only a few weeks, and Brenner has known them even less time. She decided the best way to approach the project was to re-envision her company's signature piece, heartSTRINGS, and use that work as a "way in." She will be expanding the work and adding an original section, just for this class.At first, Brenner was apprehensive about working with such new students, concerned that they might be uncomfortable with the complex partnering. Instead, she found most of them to be quite at ease. Of the freshmen, she says, "They're just that: 'fresh'"—open to new ideas. "I could do anything with them," she adds. "They have a nice rapport with each other and understand and hear music well." She knows the dancers are physically capable of advanced and complicated movement, but would rather have them focus on being sensitive to each other, and being precise and articulate in a more "grounded and rounded" way. "In the piece, the dancers are always in relationship to each other; it's always about wanting human contact."Susan Marshall is as interested in learning about her dancers as she is in the final work; they are the same thing. Marshall, a Juilliard alumna, requires that her dancers be involved in the creative process. By watching videos from their previous year, Marshall discovered that they had a penchant for "extreme partnering" and for extended, stretching movement. The piece will reflect this; she is interested in what works best for them.
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| Susan Marshall in rehearsal with the sophomore class of dancers. (Photo by Rosalie O'Connor) |
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Through structured improvisations, the dancers come up with the "seed material." Marshall then becomes a master orchestrator, culling the best of this movement and shaping it to fit her vision of the piece. Much of the rehearsal is spent improvising in small groups. Marshall goes from group to group, offering advice, focusing their efforts, and suggesting possibilities they don't yet see. The room is rife with laughter, near collisions, and a lot of "let's do that again!"The time and energy that Marshall is devoting to these students seems almost unlikely, considering her extensive biography. In addition to the pieces created for her own acclaimed company, Marshall has created many works for such companies as the Boston Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, and Montreal Danse. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, five National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Dance Magazine Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two Bessies (New York Dance and Performance Awards for outstanding choreographic achievement).Marshall says this process has been challenging for her as well. She is not used to working with such a large group—especially of unfamiliar people, or so quickly. The piece "could look like a very dance-oriented classical construction but, because of the way it's being presented, will have a metaphorical resonance." Marshall is known for combining pedestrian movement and narrative themes, all with a formal eye. Allan Ulrich of The San Francisco Examiner wrote, "Marshall elevates nontraditional dance movement as far as she can take it, while retaining a strong sense of architecture and preserving an almost palpable emotional edge."Ronald K. Brown is facing the mirror, repeating a movement phrase over and over again, each time making subtle changes and adding on to the dance sentence. Behind him the dancers are following along, picking up the details of the movement a little at a time, watching intently as they follow his rhythm. There are no counts to shout out over the music. He has a quiet voice, and manages to create and teach the movement without any unnecessary words. "The movement text is here and everyone can come to it—climb into it, rather than putting it on."
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| Ronald K. Brown dances with the junior class. (Photo by Rosalie O'Connor) |
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There are two clear steps Brown takes as he is creating a dance. First he creates the vocabulary, which everyone learns. He then shapes it into a piece, rather than creating the movement and the structure simultaneously. The piece, he says, "felt like a conversation, like a duet"—for 24 dancers. The dancers have all performed the work as a duet, and he adds and recasts based on their interaction. Eventually the dance will incorporate two casts of 12.The vocabulary comes from Brown himself, as well as from traditional dance and American Sign Language. There are gestural passages that literally mean "remember," "everyone," and "peace." The sign for peace is similar to that which a child would make to evoke a gun: index finger pointed outward to take aim. The dancers, for moments, seem to become soldiers with rifles. The piece, Brown says, is about "mourning for the people we have lost, resurrecting them and reminding us that the final destination is peace."Traditional forms and spiritual ideas have long been a major theme in Brown's work. He started his company, Evidence, in 1985 and has since received numerous awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in choreography, a Bessie, and a Black Theater Alliance Award. In 2000 he was named Def Dance Jam Mentor of the Year. He has created work for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, African American Dance Ensemble, Cleo Parker Robinson, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Def Dance Jam Workshop, and Philadanco. Sarah Kaufman of The Washington Post wrote, "Brown's choreography has zoomed to the forefront of modern dance by virtue of its exquisitely sculpted movement, and a compelling sense that the dancing springs from a deep well of spiritual urgency."Robert Battle commands the dance studio with humor, interrupting himself to tell a story that leaves the dancers in stitches. He is a deceptively keen storyteller, musician, and dancer. As a choreographer, he knows exactly what he wants but allows the dancers to arrive at that point with him. He shows them movement and, as they repeat it back to him, he notices small differences in their performances that inspire him to adapt the movement in another direction.
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| Robert Battle in 2001, rehearsing his work Base Line with Juilliard students. (Photo by Nan Melville) |
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Battle graduated from Juilliard in 1994, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award and the Martha Hill Prize. While a dancer with the Parsons Dance Company, he began his life as a choreographer, first setting his work on the company in 1998. He has since been commissioned to choreograph works all over the U.S., including for Hubbard Street 2, Alvin Ailey (an upcoming collaboration, Love Stories, with Judith Jamison and Rennie Harris to the music of Stevie Wonder), Ailey II, Dallas Black Dance Theater, and the 50th anniversary of Juilliard's Dance Division in 2002. His company, Battleworks, was founded in 2002, and has a full touring season in the spring and a summer season at Dance Theater Workshop.The piece he is choreographing for this project is physically exhausting. The dancers are panting after a particularly grueling passage, but eager to do it again. Battle is not afraid to take dancers to an exceptionally physical place, and is known to push movement to the edge of what dancers are capable of.The piece begins with "ice images" in both the movement and music, clean and detached, and then gets "warmer," more "human," with more movement. Battle is attracted to the image of a pressure cooker. The dancers build movement and then—when they can't possibly move any faster, any more frenetically—they will have to stop.
He has worked several times with the composer of this piece, John Mackey. Battle has a keen interest in music and describes himself as a frustrated singer. In rehearsal, he follows and choreographs from the music score. During a rehearsal break, he sits down to play the piano, his large hands sweeping along the keys. Some of his ideas for the choreography are inspired by Verdi's Requiem; he likes the idea of the chorus on bleachers at the rear of the stage, their voices soaring out into the space.Besides presenting an opportunity for every dancer in the division to rehearse and perform new work, New Dances also serves as a building block for the future. Some of the Juilliard dancers may be inspired to work with one of these artists after graduation—and if that attraction is mutual, the choreographer will already be aware, in an intimate way, of that dancer's talents.Sarah Adriance, who graduated from Juilliard's Dance Division in 1995, is associate director for dance admissions and coordinates the Summer Dance Intensive.
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