Kindred Spirits

I am so excited that the Yuval Ron Ensemble is coming to Houston! Although we use some of their beautiful, intoxicating music in the Al Andalus Project, I have never had the chance to meet them or to hear them live.

Now is the chance...for me, and for you, too! They peform a concert at the Jewish Community Center's Kaplan Theatre this Saturday, November 8th, at 8:00pm.

It was an exciting moment when our Music Director, Sharon Joy, discovered the Yuval Ron website. Here was a composer and a music ensemble that are dedicated to bringing people together in peace through the music traditions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity! How in line with Dancepatheatre and especially with our Al Andalus Project is that?! Their music focuses on particular regions and eras, and naturally Al Andalus is one of them. On top of that, there are two dancers who sometimes join the ensemble: a Sufi; and Maya Karrasso (see below), who blends various styles of Oriental dance. Even more alignment with us and with my Modern-Andalusian Fusion class!

Even before that moment of discovering his website, Sharon and I knew that Yuval Ron was a kindred spirit. He composed the music for the Academy Award winning independent short film, West Bank Story. A spoof of West Side Story (as you may have guessed), this hilarious and brilliant work pokes fun at everyone equally, and makes you laugh till your sides split. The music is just perfect, and is integral to both the film's effectiveness and its hilarity.

Sharon had already obtained a DVD of West Bank Story and used it in her peace-making work with Houston's Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue group that she founded and facilitates. (Yes, even though she now lives in Louisisana, Sharon travels to Houston each month to contnue her work with the group. That's dedication!) I watched it twice before the film was honored with the Academy Award. So we already loved the work of Yuval Ron before we knew about his greater body of work.

When Sharon told me about the website, I heard some of the music, and all of this came together, it was an exciting moment! And when Yuval granted permission for us to use selections of his music for the Al Andalus Project, it was a joyous moment!

For those of you who saw the August, 2007 version of Al Andalus! The Legend, Yuval Ron's music accompanies some of the highlights of the production including: the men's duet with the Botany Codex; the "good news duet" when Shaprut stops Fatima from fleeing Cordoba; the opening of the Act II with various mystical traditions portrayed in dance.

Besides the upcoming Saturday night concert, another highlight of the Yuval Ron Ensemble is Maya Karrasso's Belly Dance Master Class on Friday, November 7th, 4:30-6:00pm, also at the JCC. You bet your belly I'm going to be there taking it!


I hope to see you at one of these uplifting events. Till then,

Paz
Shalom
Salaam
Peace

Storms, Art, and Humans

Now that everyone has power again, I’m taking a break from writing about the Al Andalus Project to reflect for a bit about Ike. Here’s my story, and here are my post-Ike thoughts.

I live in Montrose with my partner Tom Yeager in a nearly hundred-year-old house. Tom had just spent two years restoring the original storm shutters; we used them, and they worked. There were still many shutter-less windows and our wood supply was short, so Tom got creative and used ladders and whatever we had to block as much glass from our pecan trees as possible. We came through unscathed…no broken glass, antique or new. Our papaya tree is now a headless stick in the yard and the pecan tree was brutally pruned, but our hundred-year-old Canary Island Palm is still standing tall.

It was a scary night in a noisy house, and we kept getting up and running up and downstairs checking out the bangs and clangs, never really sleeping. Our final power loss came at 5:30am.

The next morning, we walked through the drizzling mist to see teams of neighbors moving foliage debris out of a neighbor’s yard and out of the sewer. Streets were un-passable due to the mass of tree limbs and scattered branches, just like all the streets in Ike’s path. There were those uprooted trees lying in yards and streets or resting on a crushed fence or part of a roof, scenes that we all saw. But the people I encountered were smiling. We were alive. One couple was distraught that, although they had fine coffee beans, they could not use the grinder without power; they suffered from custom coffee withdrawal. Tom and I – non-coffee drinkers – were amused and amazed.

Living without electricity put us on a dawn-to-dusk schedule and wondering what to do in the evenings without our usual activity crutches and demands. We ended up having a jam session on our piano and percussion instruments, something we had not indulged in for years. I spent another evening drafting an essay by candle light…by hand with a pen, like back in the old days. It made me wonder how much more creative I might be if our community were power-free every night, unable to work at the computer or watch television.

In those days of refrigerator self-defrosting, Tom and I cooked up large batches of food on our gas stove and propane-fueled backyard grill, and packed it up in our car along with plates, napkins and plastic-ware. I thought we would drive to the bridge where homeless people live, but we never made it out of Montrose. Whenever we saw someone walking or sitting on their porch who looked hungry, we stopped and asked. Then we opened up the back of the car and served up a plate. We returned home without any leftovers. There were plenty of hungry people here in Montrose those days.

Like many others, our best way of getting the news was to make a cell phone call to someone out of town. We didn’t want to waste our radio batteries listening to the many hours of other people’s hurricane stories that were airing, but regular scheduling was suspended for those stations that were still in business, so we didn’t know when to tune in for the news. It was quite frustrating. We had no idea what was happening in the rest of the country or the world.

We were among the luckiest: no house damage, minimal foliage loss, and our power came back on that first Monday evening. But many of our neighbors remained in the dark for weeks. So one neighbor spent much of each day at our house on his laptop and powering up in the air conditioning, and a college student moved in for a couple of weeks. When the power first came on and we were able to see the news, the sad scenes of Galveston and Boliver were shocking and grief-inducing.

With electricity restored, I lurched into action at my computer. And that is when I discovered that it didn’t really matter that I now had electricity because so many other people didn’t, and so many businesses were closed, that I couldn’t really accomplish anything anyway. Couldn’t re-set postponed performances and rehearsals. Couldn’t find out if certain people were okay. Couldn’t plan meetings or set calendar dates. Couldn’t effectively work on fundraising. Couldn’t teach classes at studios without power. Couldn’t get students to come to classes at studios with power. It was so weird. Everything was back to normal at my house, but it was like living in a twilight zone.

As a member of Houston’s dance community I grieved that Dance Source Houston’s two annual weekends of dance at Miller Outdoor Theatre were cancelled. But many other performing groups were set back as well, including Dancepatheatre. On the heels of Ike came the tremors of the national – now global – economic disaster, never good news for the arts which feel the effects of such conditions sooner, deeper and longer than most segments of society. Performing arts are ethereal…here for a moment, gone forever. In uncertain economic times, people find security in things tangible and seemingly stable.

During the final week of the power restoration process for Houston, I left on a long-planned trip with family members to North Carolina and Vermont. It felt awkward and naughty…everyone was about to get reconnected and I would have my chance to forge ahead in getting Dancepatheatre back on track, but I would be off on a relaxing trip instead. (I actually ended up doing some work from my brother’s computer.)

But there’s something about walking through the woods in rural Vermont when the trees are in their finest fall colors; when red, orange and florescent yellow leaves rain down on you and your leaf-covered path as a breeze shakes the branches; that sets your head straight. The smells of the cool, misty woods wash away the urgency of urban profaneness, and remind you that you are one of the human animal species expressing yourself as human animals do on the glorious planet Earth.

The storm came to Houston and changed our lives, for some more than for others. Now a different kind of storm is spreading across the globe and will change our lives further, for some more than for others. For us artists, it’s an opportunity to stretch our creativity to the max as we surf the waves that we can’t predict in detail but know are coming. To be sure, many artists will give up and find other ways to support themselves. Others will alter the course of their careers in ways they could never have imagined, for better or for worse. Large, established performing companies may only have to downsize for a few years, while others will go under.

But whatever happens, I like to remember what I remembered walking in the Vermont woods: that we are human animals, living on the planet Earth. And this makes me happy. Like the other animals, it is exquisitely good to joyfully play while we’re in our bodies on the planet. Everything else is culture that human animals make up, and it’s best not to get too bogged down in the little details of that or to give it so much importance that we forget that we are animals on the planet.

Creating art and enjoying art are ways of playing, ways of connecting to our animal-on-the-Earth selves. I don’t know what form the changes that I will choose will take as the global situation unfolds, but I find my commitment renewed to continue finding ways to create, perform, enjoy and play. Solutions to crises lie somewhere in remembering our identity as joyful animals – who posses the amazing gift of being able to re-invent culture - on this wondrous planet Earth.

The Legend Continues...

Leah Bauer as Fatima of Cordoba and Alex Abarca as Hasdai Ibn Shaprut in the August, 2007 workshop performance of Al Andalus! The Legend.

Sorry, I took a ten month break from blog writing. I’m back to it again.

While I wasn’t blog writing, some things happened to the Al Andalus Project. It got extended. It is now a multi-year project. We realized that this endeavor is so very big…B-I-G, that we needed a few more years to let it ferment and grow artistically. Conveniently, this also allows us to do the fundraising in smaller chunks. Although the chunks are still fairly big. It’s all relative.

Let’s back up so I can catch you up. If you read the first blog, you already know that Phase I culminated in a workshop performance of Al Andalus! The Legend a year ago. Phase II began in 2008 with the Dance Styles of Al Andalus Workshop in January, a tour to Louisiana in March, a presentation at SIETAR Houston in April, and finished with a duet performance in the BRDF in June.

Teachers of the Dance Styles of Al Andalus Workshop in January, 2008. From left to right: Ady Fisberg, Sara Draper, Lucia Rodriguez-Sanchez, Maria Ferdandez Urbaez.

The Dance Styles of Al Andalus Workshop at University of Houston featured our project consultants Ady Fisberg teaching Sephardic folk dance and Lucia Rodriguez-Sanchez teaching flamenco. Maria Fernandez Urbaez taught Middle Eastern dance. All of this was followed by my debut offering of a new style that I’m developing, Modern Andalusian Fusion. (Since that time I’ve offered this master class at NSU in Louisiana and at American College Dance Festival in Texas. I am offering a Modern Andalusian Fusion workshop in Houston this fall…visit http://dancepath.com/events.htm for details.) The Dance Styles workshop was attended by enthusiastic participants (as were the master classes) and we all had a wonderful time.

In April, Dr. Sharon Joy (Music Director of the Al Andalus Project) and I gave a multi-media lecture presentation to SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) in Houston titled, Al Andalus! The Legend: Then and Now, Spain and Houston. We gave a summary of the project and offered insights of cross-cultural awareness that unfolded for us during our work with our multi-cultural team of artists, musicians, translators, and scholars.

In June, Leah Bauer and Richard Hubscher performed the love duet choreographed to the soul-wrenching Sephardic song, Dame La Mano recorded by Alhambra, the ensemble of our consultant Isabelle Ganz. This presentation was part of the Dance Gathering, an event in the annual BRDF (Big Range Dance Festival).

Backstage at the recital hall at NSU. From left to right: Khaled Al Jamal, Linda Gomez, Kristina Koutsoudas, Leah Bauer, Jonathan Gutierrez.

The highlight of Phase II was the March Al Andalus Tour to Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Consultant/performers Kristina Koutsoudas and Khaled Al Jamal, along with dancers Leah Bauer, Linda Gomez and Jonathan Gutierrez accompanied me to NSU. Sharon is a Music Education faculty member there and served as our tour coordinator. Kristina and I taught master classes in Middle Eastern dance and Modern Andalusian Fusion to students in the dance program. Khaled taught master classes in Middle Eastern music to percussion students and another to strings students. Sharon and I did the lecturing in a lecture-demonstration that included our dancers, Khaled and Sharon. They performed numbers from our production that included segments of multi-lingual narration and a slide show of Andalusian architecture. The performance and master classes were enthusiastically received. This was a rewarding endeavor that we may repeat on other campuses in the future.

Speaking of the future, we now foresee a Phase III, a Phase IV, and even a Phase V to the Al Andalus Project. I'll give you more details as we go along, but the main idea is that we’re going to work our way up to our pinnacle production over time. Meanwhile, I’ll be offering Modern Andalusian Fusion classes to dancers who want to train in this style, and it looks like some additional, interesting Al Andalus Project events will continue to pop up along the way. I hope that you will journey with us throughout the length of this discovery and creation-filled path!

As the Legend Begins...

Introduction to This Blog

In this blog, I will mainly be reflecting on the most recent aspect of the Al Andalus Project, which is the primary focus of my dance company, Dancepatheatre, for the 2007-2008 season. I’ll include my feelings and thoughts about it, and reflections on my personal experiences related to the project. This serves as a behind-the-scenes peek for anyone who might be interested.

But first, as an orientation, I should mention that you can get more formal information about Dancepatheatre at www.dancepath.com. (That’s where you can find out who Sharon, Kristina, and other people I mention below are and how they’re involved in this work.) And I should explain some basics about the Al Andalus Project, even though that’s explained pretty well on the Al Andalus page of the website.

The Al Andalus Project is divided into two phases. Phase I is over. I’m in the early stages of Phase II, which will culminate in performances of Al Andalus! The Legend, a multi-disciplinary dance epic, on May 22 & 23 (yes that’s a Thursday and Friday) in Zilkha Hall of the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. The project also includes numerous events and activities leading up to the performance, like auditions and like a lecture-demo at Northwestern University in Natchitoches, Louisiana….but more about all that later.

Today’s Topic

Today I want to talk about my thoughts on Phase I, which culminated in a single performance of the first rendition of Al Andalus! The Legend at Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex here in Houston on Saturday, August 11, 2007.

Wow. It was a big project. And really fun. I’m happy that we met our goals of accomplishing the first rendition: research, story-writing, Sharon’s music selections and compositions, my choreography…and all the other aspects of the production. We had to add a row of cushions on the floor for the sold-out audience plus had over one hundred on the waiting list, and about forty stayed for the Talk Back session. This was all very exciting!

Challenges Met

Of course, as is usually the case with new creative endeavors, not every aspect of Phase I went precisely as planned. We had decided to keep the production aspects low-key so we could concentrate on the creative aspects. But, creative maniacs that we are, once we started writing the story, cast size expanded. The need for small set pieces and props in order to make the choreographic concepts and the story work grew. Soon the dance studio at UH became a warehouse for props, and my car was full two days a week as I hauled everything to the Urgeworks studio for Wednesday night rehearsals. Fortunately, our stage manager oversaw those details wonderfully in production.

Costume needs grew along with cast size. UH Dance, UHD Theatre (thanks to Pat Covington’s connections), San Jacinto College South, and individuals like Frank Shonka who happened to have monk costumes…all made contributions of costume loans. Although a far cry from what we envision for the May show, considering costumes were never intended to be a focus for Phase I, these costumes were somewhat miraculous.

A classic challenge for collaborating composers and choreographers is coordinating the timing of the product. This project was no different. When will the music for such-and-such dance be ready? How many rehearsals will that allow me with the dancers, accounting for the other work that must be done when I have them? Will it be enough? Of course every choreographer will tell you there are never enough rehearsals when a show is premiering, no matter what. But we were able to coordinate timing to complete the first rendition production from beginning to end, no small accomplishment.

And Sharon and I knew this was a big bite, which is why we divided the work into two bites. That was perhaps our best planning idea. We still have Phase II to further develop the compositions and choreography that we decide we want to delve into more deeply.

Choreographic Process

One of my very most favorite aspects of this project has been experimenting with blending the traditional styles with modern. The first half of the Purim Masquerade Dance is strongly rooted in medieval Sephardic folk style which then morphs into a much more modern dance style in the second half, then returning to Sephardic folk to make a kind of rondo. Interestingly, Sephardic folk dance has numerous elements that we associate with modern day flamenco. There is some surprising overlap in the various styles of that era.

Blending Middle Eastern styles with modern proved to be challenging because first of all, Kristina had to teach the modern dancers to move in Middle Eastern techniques. In the torso and hips and habits of shifting the weight, this is very new for many ballet and modern trained dancers. But the arms and hands are even more alien. Today’s young modern dancers are trained wonderfully and effectively with body-mind techniques and are impressive full-body dancers, but don’t focus on minutia such as subtle hand and finger moves. In the seventies when I studied with Camille Long Hill, some Bharata Natyam hand gestures and other hand exercises were built into class. When I took a master class with Nina Watt (Limón Dance Company) she had a long series on subtle hand movements. I supplemented my own western training with flamenco and Middle Eastern simply out of finding them irresistible, and practiced the hands whenever I could find a few minutes. This kind of attention to detail of expression seems to be lost from the training of the current generation of young dancers in a trade-off for other, equally good but different abilities (some of which were not invented yet when I studied with Camille).

My point is that we could have spent four times the number of hours we spent training in Middle Eastern technique, had it been available. (And the dancers would have loved it…they ate those classes up!) Kristina and I had to choose a limited number of moves and coordination principles for the dancers to master, and this was where I looked when I needed ideas for blending eastern styles with western. There were x number of moves the dancers had learned…how could I use these in a modern context to convey the idea of that particular dance? This resulted in unifying movement themes throughout the production, which could also conceivably be seen as redundancy. This is a challenging artistic aspect that I will investigate in Phase II…what are some alternative approaches to blending styles? What to keep and what to change? Audiences of traditional styles want to see that traditional style interpreted by a star’s personal artistry; modern audiences are looking for movement invention. Hmmmm. Lots to play with here.

The Persian Dance is rooted solidly in authentic Persian style, which uses an entirely different but equally sinuous hand move than Middle Eastern. So those dancers had to learn two new hand styles, both which require lots of practice. I stretched the moves into a more modern form in a few cases, but I wanted to honor the old style with one dance that was more pure, and this one is it. Kristina points out every tiny morph that I have brought to the tradition, but I actually tampered with the style much less in this number than in the others.

Of course I borrow a few flamenco basics throughout the production as well, and fortunately there is a good deal of overlap between the flowering hands of flamenco and Middle Eastern hands, although the arms are used differently. Our time period is pre-flamenco, but we know there were flamenco elements in the music and dance and poetry already, so I wanted to acknowledge that. Those of you who know El Cerrojo: The Door Latch know this is not my first time to play with flamenco fusions. With a story set in Andalusia, how could I not?

Story Writing Process

Have I mentioned the story? Writing the story was another one of the most fun aspects of this for me. Sharon provided some methodology from her opera-writing background. From the results of our research retreats, Sharon and I filtered through the long list of historical figures that we were attracted to, and narrowed it down to nine…still a large number! Then we started playing with various relationships these characters might have with each other if they all were contemporaries of each other. (Which they weren’t; but we were happy to take artistic license and use some anachronisms.) Our big challenge: if our point is to illustrate the peace and harmony and intelligence of the period, where is the conflict in the story going to come from? The obvious answer: a love triangle! And let that complicate a classic inter-ethnic love relationship where the social setting of the lovers will not permit them to marry.

But then we were stumped on how to resolve the conflict. My opera-watching background kicked in here. The story now is enriched with irresistible conventions like lovers searching for each other at a masquerade party; meddling troubadours eves-dropping and scheming; and, to push disbelief-suspension to the limit, a caliph who chooses the higher spiritual path by releasing the woman he loves to make her happy. (Okay, the happy ending is like operetta, not opera.) I’m simply in love with our story…it’s just the kind of story I go to the theater to see. And with characters (all based on real historical figures) like a great medieval caliph, a great Jewish diplomat, a Muslim woman scholar, a wealthy rebellious heiress, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, a troubadour, and the infamous (at least in the Arab world) Ziryab…what more could we ask for? (Persian dancing girls? We’ve got those too.) It’s fun, fun, fun.

The Cast

As for the cast, I am counting my lucky stars. Dancers, singers, and musicians (for recording Sharon’s original numbers) all came together to make this initial production happen. Every cast member was a person I quickly came to like as I got to know them, and they each were generous in their contributions to our efforts. Lucia and Kristina stood out as the expert soloists they are in their respective traditions. The chemistry that ignited between Alex and Leah, portraying the main love interests, was magical. The group was eclectic, with various disciplines dominating their dance backgrounds, but worked hard with me towards creating a unified look. Time in the studio with dancers is always what gives me energy, and I simply loved creating the dances with these artists.

Conclusion

From the beginning we intended to omit seriously addressing costumes, set, lighting or special effects in Phase I, and reserved working with video and live narrators for Phase II. This allowed us to focus more on the initial story/music/dance creative output during this first layer of work.

So, in addition to honing the music and choreography, there is still plenty of creative work ahead. Audience feedback confirmed and clarified both high points of the show and certain production aspects that I want to revisit, and Sharon and I have discussed moments that we want to deepen or invigorate in Phase II. I have lots of ideas for all that and can’t wait to get back into the studio!