PREVIEW time -- but let's begin with a flashback, back to last year's
Edinburgh Festival. I am writing, enthusiastically, about the Mark
Morris Dance Group . . . I am cramming in happy, heady plaudits about
his choreography and musicality . . . about his dancers' vivacious
technique, their ensemble strength, their pleasing individuality . . .
about his own idiosyncratic stage presence -- not least as Dido, that
Classic Queen -- and I'm squeezing in a last paragraph plea to Festival
Director Brian McMaster to bring Morris and Co back next year . . .
Hurrah! What do I see on Page 5 of the 93 Festival programme --
details of two separate bills of short works performed by the Mark
Morris Dance Group.
I turn the page -- and experience another flashback. Back, back to the
early eighties. To the Assembly Rooms, and an afternoon Fringe event. On
stage, two dancers are powering out the yes/no tensions of a
relationship. Chunky, funky rhythms and a voice singing ''Oh Ba-by,
Please, Ba-by, Don't GO!'' A swift, muscular style of dance, crisp in
execution because of the technical strength of the performers, hot and
sweaty and utterly riveting because of the intense-electric edge to
every moment of interaction, be it a close lock of bodies or sudden eye
contact across screeds of empty stage.
The piece was called Rotary Action. Americans Bill T. Jones -- the
tall, lean, cat-like black guy -- and Arnie Zane -- small, compact,
mercurial and white -- were the onstage/offstage partners whose
differences in background, interests, and dance styles produced work
that was intelligently radical, ardently physical, thoroughly crafted,
and always rewarding to watch.
Arnie died of Aids in 1988. The grief and anger from that loss
continue to ricochet through the work that Bill makes for the company
they founded together and which still performs under their joint names.
But before I can mull over their contribution to this year's Edinburgh
Festival dance programme yet another flashback stops me in my thought.
Around the time that Bill and Arnie had me spending every afternoon I
could watching them dance, one could pick up the Fringe brochure and
find would-be stand-up comedians outnumbered by dance groups!
Belford Church -- which for an all-too-brief period gave Edinburgh an
all-year-round dance centre -- played host to various visiting
companies. The legendary hole in the ground sprouted a cluster of
marquees known as The Circuit where one year ('83 I think it was) an
entire tent was given over to avant-garde artists working out of New
York.
As rain drummed on overhead canvas, audiences squashed together in a
contented fug of wet wool and watched Ara Fitzgerald conjuring Crazy
Jane out of the Yates Poems or Mark Taylor and Friends give wit and an
inventive polish to the minimalist school of movement, knowing that
there were other equally intriguing acts to follow later that day.
Several venues acknowledged what was (prematurely and unwisely) hailed
as the ''Dance Explosion'' . . . that year was possibly the last when
dance enthusiasts were truly spoiled for choice.
WHAT, after several lean years with good dance thin on the Edinburgh
ground, hauls these memories out of the personal archives? Only the
brave news that St Bride's Centre is in the Fringe programme with a
strong line-up of dance events under the collective title Continental
Shifts.
A dozen companies -- some pure dance, some mime-inclined, others
closer to physical theatre or mixed-media performance -- are listed
across the three weeks. To be sure, dance features elsewhere within the
Fringe, but what makes this particular venture so noteworthy is its
specific commitment to movement-based activities.
I shall dwell at greater length on individual aspects of the programme
and the people behind it at a later date. For now, let me simply say
''Well done'' to programme originator and director Niall Rea, and to
George Williamson, project director at St Bride's, for carrying the idea
beyond wishful thinking and late-night conversations.
And to tempt you a little, here's a handful of participating names --
the Featherstoneshaughs, Compagnie Herve-Gil, Ricochet Dance Company,
Trestle Theatre Company . . .
Dance may not be as extensively represented on the offical Festival
front, but, harking back to what there is -- two different programmes
from the Mark Morris Dance Group and one from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Company -- the immediate response is one of greedy anticipation.
Jones and Morris both have a magpie perception that allows them to
take on board a host of seemingly disparate sources and influences
which, in time, are filtered and distilled into their own particular
choreographic style. It could be ballet, it could be ballroom -- if the
move fits the mood or the music then why not use it! Anything rather
than become stale in a routine stepping from one formulaic sequence to
another.
The testing of conventions is, however, more than just an obvious
artistic stance. Jones and Morris are both forthright and provocative
about their homosexuality and about the politics of gay rights. And what
they live inevit-
ably feeds into what they create.
With Jones, the whole perplexed maelstrom of outrage and impotence
that beset him after Arnie's death has occasioned work that confronts
the anguish, the sense of waste, the lurking banality that so often
mocks our mourning and the whole stricken issue of our survival.
By turn instense, witty, solemn and dignified, highly energised, the
dance is, in his own words: ''My brand of dealing with the demons . . .
I fight back with my art.'' Fierce, beautiful, courageous, exhilarating
-- the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.
The variety of love and its fulfilment (or lack of it) is a recurring
theme in Mark Morris's work. Sometimes he treats it flippantly -- he has
a good line in preening, primping innuendo -- other times the mood is
poignantly emotional, as with New Love Song Waltzes (set to Brahms Song
Cycle and part of his first Edinburgh programme).
And of course, there is the added joy that Morris revels in having
live musicians and singers as part of each event -- listen out for
Michele Shocked and Rob Wasserman alongside the Emperor String Quartet.
I end the preview with a final flashback, to this year's Mayfest where
I reviewed the premier of James MacMillan's Visitatio Sepulchri. As
staged by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, it was an encouraging
statement about the value of crossover, with dance complementing the
music and singing. It is part of this year's
Edinburgh Festival music programme -- a promising step forward for all
concerned, I would say.
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