October, 1987 -- -- - • -' - • ®

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL '~'6 J_'a _G, "'~ _ ·v SPONSOREDBYPHILIPMORRISCOMPANIESINC. The 1987 NEXT WAVE Festival is sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc. ----- Major funding for the NEXT WAVE Production and Touring Fund and Festival is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Brooklyn Academy ofMusic NEXT WAVE Festival Rockefeller Foundation, The Ford Founda­ Sponsored by Philip Morris Companies, Inc. tion, The Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Booth October, 1987 Volume 5, No. 1 Ferris Foundation, The Henry Luce Foun­ dation, Inc., the AT&T Foundation, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The William CONTENTS and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Hinduja Foundation,TheEducationalFoundation The Mahabharata: India's Great Epic ofAmerica, the Morgan Guaranty Trust by Barbara Stoler Miller ...... 3 Companr, Robert W. Wilson, The Reed Foundation Inc., the Emma A. Sheafer Exploring Contradictions: The Dance-Theatre Charitable Trust, Schlumberger, Yves Saint ifMaguy Marin by BurtSupree ...... 7 Laurent International, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional funds Khlebnikov's Zangezi: The First for the NEXT WAVE Festival are provided by Supersaga by Paul Schmidt ...... 10 The Best Products Foundation, Coca-Cola Entertainment, Inc., Meet the Composer, Raising the Bamboo Curtain: Inc., the CIGNA Corporation, The William Nixon in China by JohnS. Major ...... 13 and Mary Greve Foundation, Inc., the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, The Squat Theater and the Art ifLiving Armand G. ErpfFund, the Arthur Ross Foundation, the Harkness Ballet Founda­ by Don Shewey ...... 17 tion, Inc., Remy Martin Amerique, the BAM Committee for TheMahaoharata, In TraininaforSwing and the BAM NEXT WAVE Producers by M. Elizabeth Osborn ...... 21 Council. TheEyes Haveit Corporate Production Sponsors byRobertGreskovic ...... 24 for The Mahabharata: AT&T Foundation Schlumberger Yves Saint Laurent International Air India The presentation of The Mahabharata and the The NEXT WAVE Festival is pro­ Coca-Cola Entertainment, Inc. U.S. tour of the Maguy Marin Dance Company duced by the Brooklyn Academy is made possible, in part, with the support of ofMusic, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Foundation Sponsors the Ministry of Culture and Communication for The Mahabharata: in Paris, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Brooklyn, New York, 11217 The Eleanor Naylor Dana through the Association Fran~ai se d'Action Charitable Trust Artistique in Paris, together with the Cultural ONTHENEXTWAVEispublished The Ford Foundation Services of the French Embassy in New York. by the Humanities Program ofthe The Rockefeller Foundation WNYC-FM is the official radio station of the BAM NEXT WAVE Festival. The Howard Gilman Foundation The Hinduja Foundation NEXT WAVE. Editor: Roger W Oliver Sponsorship of Special Events during The Producers Council provides annual private patronage for BAM's NEXT WAVE Festival this season's NEXT WAVE Festival and also organizes and sponsors seminars, has been provided by: Design: Jon Crow/Advance Graphic exhibitions, publications, and special events NEXT WAVE logo design: Philip Morris Companies, Inc. for this program throughout the year. Yves Saint Laurent International Valerie Pettis+ DOUBLESPACE Remy Martin Amerique The BAM facility is owned by the City of New Newsweek York and its operation is supported, in part, © 1987 by the Brooklyn Academy Spy with public funds provided through the New Ttmeinc. York City Department of Cultural Affairs. ofMusic WilliWear Ltd. The principal capital funding for the BAM Majestic Theater was provided by the City of New York through the New York City Depart­ Front Cover: Scenesfrom the Peter Brook ment of Cultural Affairs with the special production

by Barbara Stoler Miller

he two great Sanskrit epics of India, the Mahabharata T and the Ramayana, have enchanted and instructed the people of India for thousands of years, deeply influencing the religious and cultural life of India and the rest of South Asia. Both epics were transmit­ ted orally for centuries before being written down. They have their roots in events that took place in the period following the entry of the Indo-Aryan speaking nomadic tribes into northwestern India around 1200 B.C. The composition of the epics began as these tribes settled in the river valleys of the Indus and the Ganges during the first millenium B.C., when their nomadic sacrificial cults began to develop into the reli­ gious traditions of Hinduism. Most scholars would agree that the Mahabharata was composed over the centuries between 400 B.C. and 400 A.D. The work has stylistic and mythological roots in the ancient

A scenejrom The Mahabharata. Photo: © 1987 Martha Swope. 3 Robert Lanadon lloyd (lift) as JYasa and Anconin Scahly(riaht)as the child in The Mahabharata. Photo: © 1987 Martha Swope.

that is, the code of conduct appropri­ ate to each group in the hierarchically ordered Hindu society. Theoretically, right and wrong are not absolute; practically, right and wrong are decided according to kinship, social rank, stage of life, and occasion. This relativity of values and obligations is perhaps the most difficult aspect of Hinduism for modern Westerners who are raised on ideals of universality and egalitarianism, but without an attempt to understand it, the world of the epics remains opaque. Appropriate to the authority of their social position as warrior-kings, the epic heroes embody order and sacred duty (dharma), while their foes, whether human or demonic, embody chaos (adharma). The ritualization of warrior life and the demands of sacred duty define the religious and moral meaning of heroism throughout the Mahabharata. Acts of heroism are characterized less by physical prowess than by dharma, often involving extraordinary forms of sacrifice, pen­ ritual hymns of the Ri9 Veda and nar­ ance, devotion to a divine authority, celibacy, and the priest Drona, who is rative sources in oral tales of a tribal and spiritual victory over evil. a master of archery. It was Bhishma war fought in the Punjab early in the The epic's main narrative revolves who chose Drona to educate the first millenium B.C. As the tradition around a feud over succession to the princes in the martial arts. Arjuna was taken over by professional story­ ancient kingdom of Kurukshetra in becomes Drona's favored pupil by tellers and intellectuals, many sorts of northern India. The rivals are two taking a vow to avenge his teacher's legend, myth, and speculative thought sets of cousins descended from the honor at the end of his training. The were absorbed, including the Bhanavad legendary king Bharata: the Pandavas, Pandavas excel their cousins in every Gita, which belongs to the layer of the five sons of Pandu, and the Kauravas, warrior skill and virtue, which epic that took form around the first one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra. arouses the jealousy of Dhritarashtra's century A.D. In its present form the The feud itself is based on genealogi­ eldest son, Duryodharia. Mahabharata consists of over one cal complications involving a series of Although Yudhishthira, Pandu's hundred thousand verses divided into divine interventions. Pandu becomes eldest son, has the legitimate right to eighteen books. The martial saga has king because his elder brother be king, Duryodhana covets the been expanded in an encyclopedic Dhritarashtra is congenitally blind throne, and in various episodes, he repository of ancient Indian myths, and is thus ineligible for direct suc­ attempts to assassinate his cousins or ideals, and concepts, of which cession to the throne. But Pandu is otherwise frustrate their rights. He Indians say, "What is not here is not unable to beget offspring because of a totally defeats Yudhishthira in a found anywhere else:' Even today curse that forbids him intercourse crooked dice game played as part of a itinerant performers travel through­ with his two wives on penalty of royal ritual, and then imposes thir­ out India and Southeast Asia to chant death. After a long reign, he renounces teen years of exile on the Pandavas. and dramatize the epic. the throne, and retires to the forest, The Pandavas return at the end of Just as Greek culture has drawn on where he fathers five sons with the their exile to reclaim the kingdom. the Homeric epics to represent its help of five gods, and then dies. Duryodhana's refusal to step aside values, so Hindu culture has drawn The Pandava brothers are taken to makes war inevitable. upon the Mahabharata and the be educated with their cousins at the The war, which ends with the Ramayana to represent its values, court of Dhritarashtra, who has destruction of both armies, is dominant among which is the idea of assumed the throne as regent in the represented in a series of personal order and sacred duty (dharma). Der­ absence of another adult heir. The confrontations and moral crises. ived from a Sanskrit form meaning princes' two teachers are their great­ Exemplary among these is the dia­ "that which sustains:' dharma gener­ uncle Bhishma, revered for the spir­ logue between the mighty Pandava 4 ally refers to religiously ordained duty, tual power symbolized by his vow of warrior Arjuna and Krishna in the • Bhaoavad Gita. Before the war begins, epic audience know that Krishna is carefully learned and convention­ Duryodhana and Arjuna approach no common mortal. Despite his human alized, must not be mechanical; they Krishna to seek his alliance-he foibles, he speaks with the authority must appear ceremonious, graceful refuses to take arms, but allows them of omniscience as his divinity unfolds and spontaneous. An actor or actress, to choose between himself and his in the terrible spectacle of destruc­ like a yooi, must cultivate a spon­ troops. Arjuna chooses Krishna as his tion. In the theatrical adaptation of taneity that transcends learned con­ charioteer, and Duryodhana is the Mahabharata directed by Peter ventions, artificiality and limitations delighted to have Krishna's troops for Brook and written by jean-Claude of the stage. It is intense concentra­ the Kaurava army. In the face of Carriere, the dramatization of tion that allows the performer to doing battle against his relations, Krishna's enigmatic presence reveals become absorbed in creating scenes Arjuna's nerve fails. Krishna's argu­ basic contradictions inherent in the that put the audience in intimate ments on why Arjuna must overcome epic universe. touch with vital aspects of nature and his uncertainty and fear of the battle The techniques of traditional Indian human psychology. Through the contain ideas that resonate through­ theater inform Brook's conception millenia Indian poets and performers out the entire epic. We can sym­ of the Mahabharata. Ancient Indian have exploited the theatrical possibilities pathize with the warrior's impulse to theorists call drama "visual poetry;' of the Mahabharata by elaborating the shrink from the violence of tne as opposed to "aural poetry;' because epic stories through stylized enactment human condition and can also learn it presents us with a world to see. The -verbal play, dance gestures, signs of from what Krishna teaches him about word for acting in Sanskrit is abhinaya, emotion, costumes, and makeup. his own and others' mortality. the language of gesture that has been In Indian terms, the success of a Krishna's exposition of the relation­ a distinctive feature of the Indian drama is the resolution of emotional ship between death, sacrifice, and stage from the earliest times. Particu­ disharmonies in the microcosm of devotion explores the idea that one lar importance is given to the use of the theater by exploring deeper rela­ must heroically confront death in hands and eyes for translating ideas, tions that bind apparent conflicts of order to transcend the limits of ordi­ objects, and emotions into aesthetic existence. The manifestation of these nary existence. statements. Ardous training is neces­ relations produces in the audience sary to perfect abhinaya. Acting in the intense aesthetic experience For Arjuna, the epic warriors, and Indian theater is considered a disci­ called rasa. Though usually translated the audience of the Mahabharata, pline (yooa) whereby the actor and by "sentiment" or "mood;' rasa more Krishna is a perplexing figure. He is a acted become one. Gestures, however literally means the "flavor'' or "taste" companion and teacher, as well as a of something. Rasa is the flavor that potent god who commands devotion. the dramatist and performers distill Kirshna's mythology suggests that he from ordinary emotional situations in was originally a tribal hero who was order to present them for aesthetic transformed into a cult divinity, appreciation. Human emotion, the becoming an incarnation of cosmic basic material of rasa, is divided by power who periodically descends to early theorists into eight categories, earth to accomplish the restoration of each of which has its corresponding order in times of chaos. The inter­ rasa: the romantic, the heroic, the weaving of mundane and cosmic comic, the pathetic, the furious, the levels of his activity throughout the horrible, the marvelous, and the dis­ epic makes his role as divine chari­ gusting. The relationships among these oteer to Arjuna more comprehensi­ ble. From the start, Arjuna and the

J1frey Kissoon (lift) and Sotigui Kouyate (right) in a scenejrom The Mahabharata. Photo: © 1987 Martha Swope. protested that there were holy men standing on both sides of the river watching. Then he created a fog that "seemed to cover the entire region in darkness:' Again she protested, pleading her virginity and filial piety. The great sage was pleased by her virtue and promised that his love would not ruin her virginity; then he granted her a boon. She chose as her boon that her body would always smell delicious. On the same - ~ day that she lay with Parasara, she gave birth to Vyasa on an island in ) the river Yamuna. He stood before I his mother and set his mind on asceticism. "When you think of me, I shall appear to you if any task needs to be done:' The mating of the hermit with the fish-girl and the birth of Vyasa is an epic play-within-a-play that echoes the obscure origins and kinship relations governing the entire Mahabharata. The epic poet's birth and descent, like the birth and history MireilleMaalouf(lift)and Robert Lanadon lloyd (riaht) in another scenejrom The Mahabharata of the epic heroes, is a story of Photo: © 1987 Martha Swope. seduction, restored virginity, and substitute fathers (human and underlie Indian literature, beginning response to janamjeyas request to divine). Vyasa, like Kama, the first­ with the two great Sanskrit epics. hear the whole epic text. The narra­ born of the Pandavas, is born outside Consonant with ancient Indian oral tor begins by telling of King Vasu, and before his mother's marriage. and dramatic traditions, the Carriere­ through whose city a river flowed. A just as Kama's mother, Kunti, is the Brook version of the Mahabharata mountain fell in love with the river, hub of a multivalent set of relations begins with a prologue on the crea­ waylaid her, and begot twins of her. that constitute the epic story, so tion of the epic itself. The first The king freed her by kicking the Vyasa's mother, Satyavati, is the hub character to speak is Vyasa, the mountain with his foot. In gratitude, of a set of relations that constitute author to whom the epic is tradition­ when her children were born she the formal prologue of the poem. ally attributed. Formally, he plays the gave them to the king. He made the Later, when the continuity of the role that the director, or sutradhara, boy chief of his army and married Bharata lineage is threatened, plans in the prologue of the tradi­ the girl, whose beauty was so great Satyavati calls on Vyasa to sire sons. tional Indian theater. Vyasas role that the thought of her made him Not only does he carry on the Bharata penetrates deep into the epic: he is spill his seed, which eventually fell line, but he teaches the Mahabharata coexistent with it and intimately into the river Yamuna, where it to the bards so that the story will be involved with the actors. He is both impregnated a nymph who had been passed down through the ages. the epic's author and the sage grand­ cursed by Brahma to become a fish. father of the epic heroes. He is a figure When she was in her tenth month whose presence defines and animates she was caught by fishermen who the text he inhabits. The story of pulled human twins from her belly Vyasa's ancestry allows the audience and presented the marvelous pair to to enter the imaginative universe of their king. He raised the boy as his the Mahabharata from its origin. son, but the girl, who smelled like a Within the epic text, the story is fish, he gave to a fisherman. She narrated by the priest Vaisampayana, plied a ferry on the river Yamuna, Barbara Stoler Miller is the Chairman a disciple of Vyasa, at an assembly of and so Parasara came to see her

n early July in Montpellier, body-a good idea in the heat. Last acceptance, she took classes there France, Maguy Marin plunks night Marin was with her company in with Nina Virubova, a romantic I herself down at our outdoor cafe Aix-en-Provence to perform Eden, dancer who had been a star with the table, fresh from a little spree in a toy one of the works she'll be bringing to Marquis de Cuevas. At 18, she got her store. Gleefully, she displays a small BAM this fall. Tonight she's headed first professional contract with the Meccano set Qike an Erector set) back to Paris. This afternoon she's ballet company in Strasbourg. she'll use in working out some of her been walking around with Jean-Paul It was in Strasbourg that her dream next piece, provided that her five­ Montanari, director of Montpellier's got a serious jolt. She became year-old doesn't appropriate it. Well, annual international dance festival, friendly with some young actors from this set's too small anyway; she needs checking out indoor and outdoor the school there, and suddenly real­ something bigger, with more pieces. dance spaces because she's been com­ ized that what she was doing in her Too bad the store's already closed. missioned to do a new work here dancing was "very far away from my What's in the works is The Seven next year. Both her collaborations real feelings. You know, in classic Deadly Sins, a major collaboration with the Lyon Opera Ballet will be dance you learn discipline, you learn with the Lyon Opera Ballet (for which presented as well. to do the steps the way they tell you she choreographed Cendrillon) that One of the foremost French to do them and you really learn will feature her own dancers as well choreographers, Marin is justly gain­ humility because you have to do as the ballet company, like Twyla ing an international reputation. Her exactly what the teachers saY:' She Tharp's original Deuce Coupe mingled past is checkered. She started ballet saw the discipline in her friends' her company with the Joffrey Ballet. training at the age of eight in a con­ training too, but in their free time Marin is simply gleaming. Her hair servatory in Toulouse. She dreamed they were trying to make theater a little damp with sweat, smiling of being a ballerina, and at the age of pieces on their own. "What are they impishly, she's wearing a loose dark 16 battfed with her parents to let her doing?" she thought. "I like that!" gray dress that's almost as casual as a go to Paris to study further. Succeed­ And she began to ask herself what she bathrobe and barely touches the ing in wearing them down into was doing in a tutu. 7 She decided to leave the company Ambash, fought with Bejart and left were working like mad people. and study again: "To go to a modern the company to "go and look and see Because we didn't have money for class, maybe to study theater, singing. what else is in the world:' So they technicians and like that, we were the Maybe this and maybe that. I wanted went to Paris (and wanted to come to technicians, the costumers, to knoW.' By chance, she heard of New York but didn't have the money). choreographers-everythin9. But we Maurice Bejart's school, Mudra, They took classes, but it wasn't sat­ had a lot of satisfaction:• which was scheduled to open the sif)'ing: they were itchy. Looking She devised a project based on next year, went to Brussels to audi­ through a dance magazine they read Samuel Beckett's work, May B tion, and was accepted. "And then about a new choreographic competi­ (premiered in 1981), and was trying started a fantastic time of opening, tion in Switzerland. They decided to to raise money for it; she needed five and of contradiction. When I went work on something for a month and men and five women and only had there I knew only classic ballet, and go to the competition, which they four in the company. Finally, the suddenly it was like: aaah! My mouth won hands down, Marin says, Maison des Arts of Creteil, a Paris was opening and opening and opening. because "we were pretty good suburb, took it on and gave her a stu­ "I started doing improvisation. In dancers" and the quality of the other dio of her own to work in for the first the beginning I cried, because I couldn't imagine creating something myself. Just to be invited to move on my own! Nobody telling me to do something and having to do it. What are you asking me? I was out of my mind because of that. I did yoga too for three years. And learning to work without words but in a theatrical way. We were working from eight in the morning sometimes till eleven in the night because we couldn't stop. It was like a drug, it was so passionate:' She became loathe to take the ballet classes, thinking of it as a stiff tech­ nique, not in accord with her spirit. So when she graduated she didn't directly join Bejart's company, feeling it was too "classic" for her, but for almost a year tried to make work with other people just coming out of the school. And then, at 22, she had an urge to go back to dancing, sure that if she didn't do it then she never Compaanie Maauy Marin in Babel Babel. Photo: Bricaae. would. "I was not so concerned any­ more about dancing on the technical heights:' Bejart took her in the com­ work shown was so bad. They came time. ("Before that, we were working pany. "I was happy I think. I was at back to Paris wanting more. from two to four in one studio, then least doing my dream in a certain More was the 1978 Basnolet com­ we'd take the Metro to work in way, my little girl dream:• petition, which they also won. "We another studio from five to seven. It Again, after about four years, she were French-we almost forgot about was terrible:') Her next piece, Babel began wondering what she was doing that. The Ministry of Culture saw two Babel (1982-also to be seen at BAM) there. "What was my place?'' I French people win and they gave us was on a grander scale, created for wanted to work with a different some money. We couldn't believe it. the big stage at Creteil, at the urging spirit-maybe with a little company, So we took the money and decided to of the director of the Maison des not a big one. I feel it's important that do more. Why not?" Arts. "In the beginning, I wanted to you keep the human relation. I need They rented a small, old theater in make a work using voice- voice and it-even as a dancer, between me as a Paris, and founded Ballet Theatre de movement. That's why I took the title dancer and the choreographer. I need l'Arche (which became Compagnie Babel Babel, and, because I chose that to have a personal feeling. I want to Maguy Marin in 1984). Working with title, I took the theme of the Tower of be concerned with what the choreo­ three or four dancers they did a Babel as a base for the work. grapher's doing, to be happy to whole evening, followed up by per­ "I don't much like text theater, you defend the work, not only to be there forming here and there. The next know, where there's a lot ofblahblah­ because I'm being paid:' year the ministry laid a bit more blahblahblah. I like it when it's visual. 8 She and her husband, Daniel money on them. "For three years we When people are standing in front of • you saying fantastic things, I'm not so dancers wear body stockings painted and I liked it a lot better. Because responsive, but when they're saying with breasts and genitals to suggest you get the same emotion:• fantastic things and what I see is fan­ nakedness. Their faces are masked, Generally, Marin begins to work tastic also I get invovled. If it's just their hair is false. At first Marin not with a big conception, but a words and words and words, you worked without realizing that she small idea, an inclination. "I have might as well read it:' would want the dancers undressed. some idea in consciousness. I know In Babel Babel, the dancers speak in She was concentrating on making it somewhere in my head. But I an invented language. "You don't duets. Once the piece was done, she don't say it, even to myself. Not understand the words, but I'm sure considered how it should be even to myself. I don't want to tell you understand what they mean costumed, and realized that the best what it is because I don't want to because of the way they say it, costume would be to have the give things a form too soon. I have because of the emotion that goes into dancers naked once again. But the the feeling of the conception -like the voice. It's like movement. If you immodesty of the choreography­ for Cendrillon I knew I wanted a doll are angry or if you are happy you opening the legs, for example-made world, and for Eden something Biblical, don't do the same arabesque. Some- it impossible. "So I had to make like Bosch's Garden cf Earthly Delights. Somehow I'm looking for that. It will take about a month before I can begin to explain things to the people I'm working with. Then I can say 'I would like that to be . .. whatever: Before that, I keep it inside, I leave it to mature:' For Eden, she arrived in Angers with maybe 60 or 70 types of sounds, all those love words from Forza to Gone with the Wind. She knew that the base of the score would be the sound of heavy rain, thunderstorms, and that the other sounds would come out of the rain. "I was doing the choreography in the silence, and I was putting together the music at the same time as the steps. That was magical-to start working on it together. Actu­ ally, it was done like a film. First I would do three, four images, then I would make a montage. And then CompagnieMaguy Marin in Babel Babel. Photo: Bricage. when you have all the cuts done you put the sound on it. It was exactly like that: making the images, decid­ times when you're talking with peo­ them naked without being naked. ing the order, thinking this one ple they're telling you something very "When I started working on the should stay longer, these others go nice and you feel it's not really nice at duets, I was thinking the theme will quick, quick, quick. I was ·imagining all. Sometimes it's the contrary. I be love. Again. And I called it Eden the stage as if it were TV or a wanted to explore that contradiction:' because the first love story was movie. I'd like to do a movie, in a In Babel Babel, the dancers are there. For the music, I wanted to few years. A dance movie. Not film­ naked for the beginning and end take all kinds of little phrases-from ing dance, but a dance movie:' sections of the piece. "That was opera, movies, songs, anything-that "It's very funny to be a choreogra­ good for me because I couldn't do speak about love. Like, there is a pher;• she says, eagerly ripping the many technical things. There are film of Hitchcock where the woman cellophane wrap off her Meccano set. positions I couldn't use. For exam­ says 'I love you so much; and she ple, I couldn't use the legs as freely cries after. So I took that phrase. as I could if they were clothed. So I And Callas in La Forza del Destino had to work sculpturally, putting singing, 'I love you, I love you, yes, I bodies together like molding some­ love you. You don't believe me, yes, I thing out of mud:' love you, me too: I put love phrases In Eden, made in 1986 (a commis­ together one after another. Sud­ sion from the Centre National de denly, I felt in French that the words Burt Supree is a senior editor at Danse Contemporaine d'Angers), the were too clear, so I reversed them the Villagtt Voice. 9 KHLEBNIKOV'S by Paul Schmidt n May 9th, 1923, in a small auditorium in 0 Petrograd, Vladimir Tatlin built a construction, climbed up on ~NGEZI: it, and read the text of a dramatic poem called Zannezi, written by his poet friend Velimir Khlebnikov, who The First Supersaga had died eleven months before. "Khlebnikov thought of words as structural materials;' Tatlin said. "I decided to erect a material construc­ tion to parallel his verbal one:' We have one photograph of that evening, Tatlin on top of his construction, lit by a spotlight from below. In front of him hangs a sign that says BOM, BIM, BAM. Beside him hangs another that says HA-HA. For over sixty years Khlebnikov's Zannezi has been known primarily as the pretext for Tatlin's construction. But the real text of that evening, Khlebnikov's enormous play of words, was an unknown quantity. Now that it has finally been trans­ lated into English, this landmark of Russian Futurism is being given its first production since 1923. It is especially appropriate that Zannezi should be performed in Brooklyn, the home of Walt Whitman, because Whitman was one of Khlebnikov's early inspira­ tions. Like Whitman-and Blake and Rim baud- Khlebnikov set himself the enormous task of incorporating the entire universe into his work, to show us that the movement of the universe depends on the interconnect­ edness of its smallest parts. Perhaps the best description of Zannezi is to be found in these lines from Whitman: To me the converninn objects cif the universe perpetually .flow, All are written to me, and I must net what the writinn means. The hero of Khlebnikov's theater piece, the poet's alter ego, is the prophet Zangezi, conceived some-

One ~Vladimir Tat/in's scene design sketches for the 1923 production~ Zangezi. what in the spirit of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Like the young Khlebnikov -and like those other young forest heroes, Hiawatha and Siegfried­ Zangezi understands the language of the birds, and it is with those most ordinary yet most complex sounds that the action begins. Yet Zangezi understands the powers of language in its broadest senses, and the vari­ ous "planes" of Zanoezi catalogue and demonstrate some of the possible languages that connect the universe. We hear the language of the gods, and the famous "beyonsense" language called zaum in Russian. We hear the language of the stars in Plane Eight, the declension of intellect in Plane Nine, sound-writing in Plane Fifteen, fragments of popular speech in Planes Sixteen and Seventeen, the grand movement of numbers as his­ tory in Planes Eighteen and Nine­ teen. Finally, in Plane Twenty, in a pure theatrical metaphor, there is a scene out of some fantastic medieval morality play, the crystallization of all human endeavor in the struggle of Laughter with Death. Zangezi is a prophet: one who hears and sees and then speaks out. What he hears is sound, what he sees are the structures of sound, and what he speaks are fantastic lan­ A scenejrom Peter Se lla rs~ production qf Zangezi as.firststaoed at the guages that will enable us to com­ Museum ifCo ntemporary Art in LosAnoeles. Photo: james Ruebsamen. municate with the entire cosmos. It is the structure of the piece that is so remarkable. Khlebnikov has set himself a new dramatic task, and to I've thought up a complicated piece if writing, where the logical rules accomplish it he invents a new cate­ if time and space are broken as many times as a drunk takes a drink gory of drama. He called Zanoezi a in the course ifan hour. No section will have any connection what­ supersaoa: part history play, part dra­ to matic poem, part vision. It is a geo­ soever the next. In the course ifthe piece I intend, with a bagman's metric structure, a bundle of prodigiality, to cast upon my palette all the colors and discoveries I intersecting "planes;• points chosen have, and they are each one to have authority over only a single sec­ because several planes of reality tion: this is djfferential dramatic writing, dramatic writing whose seem unexpectedly to intersect there. He describes his method in a method relies on "the thing in itself' I include the right to use newly letter written in 1908 to his friend created words, a kind if writing based on words from a single root, the and fellow Futurist Vasily Kamensky: use ifepithets, universal phenomena, painting with sound.

11 And in the introduction to beneath the ordinary surface of lan­ Zannezi, Khlebnikov says: "the super­ guage offer us a vision of the world saga resembles a statue made from to come. Even the hero's name has blocks of different kinds of stone of an unexplained power- "stare for a varying colors-white for the body, long time at ZANGEZI;' Khlebnikov blue for the cloak and garments, wrote, "and you will see the river black for the eyes:' This kind of GANGES flowing through the mid­ stonework is called breccia, and we dle of the word:' remember that Freud, in Th e Khlebnikov ascribed a special Interpretation if Dreams, uses this power to numbers and dates, and same metaphor to describe the way Zannezi resonates with them; he we compose our dreams. imagined that by a study of the pat­ One of the critics of the first terns of historical events, we might production wrote: "Zannezi is great be able to forsee the future. Khleb· fuel for the theatrical machine, only nikov is often called a Futurist, but we have to invent a completely new he called himself a Futurian: he (.) motor:' What Khlebnikov has in fact wanted to disassociate himself from created is a theater text that any grouping of the here and now, Drawin9 ifVelimir Khlebnikov by Mayakovsky. demands a totally new theater. For especially from Marinetti and the the past twenty-five years in New Italian Futurists, and to align himself York, new generations of theatrical with the pure notion of Time. He talent have been at work rethinking offers us a vision of as yet the very forms of theater, decon­ unimagined ways of thinking and structing and'reconstructing conven­ communicating, not only with each tional theater texts. The result is a other, but with every entity on vital avant-garde that has often Planet Earth around us, and even robbed itself of speech, where text is with the stars in space. He wants to only pretext, where language is reveal the future, if only we can subordinate to a visual scenario, learn to hear it. dependent upon it, and often unim­ Tatlin had it wrong, building a portant within it. What Khlebnikov construction, because Zannezi isn't has created, however, is a theater about the visible, but the invisible. It text that demands a reconsideration is about the power of sound, from of theater-by demanding a recon­ the drone of the Buddhist OM that sideration of language. This is pre­ shakes the universe, to the most cisely the point of Zannezi. It is a advanced technologies of video that play about _language, language-play convert sound to color patterns, as in the real sense of the word, the Zangezi does. Khlebnikov wanted to way language about language is tune mankind into harmony with always play. Children know this; that the universe. He wanted to make is why they take such delight in rid­ Planet Earth fit for the future, to dles and puns. Zannezi plays with the free it from the deadly gravitational structure of language the way chil­ pull of everyday lying and pretense. dren do, with sound repetitions and He wanted to transform the World patterns, puns, and rhymes. through the Word. He deserved the The letters of the alphabet them­ title his friends conferred on him: selves, in fact, become characters in Velimir the First, King of Time. the drama. Khlebnikov perceives that the letters in a word have the power to work magic transforma­ Paul Schmidt has translated Zangezi, tions: if serf can turn to se!f, or lure alonn with the other Khlebnikov poems to rule, if player can turn to prayer, and plays collected in the book The what is the meaning of L and R? King of Time recently published by How explain that eleven + two, if the Harvard University Press. He holds a letters rearrange themselves, is also doctorate in Slavic Literature from twelve + one? Just as magic words Harvard and his essays on and trans/a· ·are intended to bring about a tions if such poets and writers as Ver­ desired future, so the unexpected laine, Mayakovsky and jarry have 12 glimpses of "magic" patterns hidden appeared in various publications. • We simply cannot qfford to leave China forever outside the family if nations . .. Th e world cannot be sife until China RAISING chanaes . .. thus our aim . .. should be to induce chanae . .. Deal ina with Red China is somethina like tryina to cope with the more explosive ahetto THE BAMBOO elements in our own country. Richard M. Nixon in CURTAIN Foreian 1ffairs, 1967 I do not expect the United Stotes to lay down the butcher knife and become a Buddha; but if the United States wishes to be a realist, I shall be a realist too. Mao Zedong, 1971

President and Mrs. Richard Nixon, accompanied by SecretarycifState William P. Roners, atop the Great Wall. UPI!Bettmann Newsphotos. Premier Chou En-lai has extended an their capital an American president Gang of Four) sought, through and legitimately by both the enormous invitation to President Nixon to visit about whose manifest unfriendliness with Mao himself, to make revolu­ Soviet troop concentrations on its China . .. President Nixon has accepted there seemingly could be no doubt? tionary purity the sole criterion for northern border and by the threat of the invitation with pleasure. How does one explain the process the correctness of any policy. a Soviet nuclear strike. Things were U.S. government press release, that began with ping-pong diplomacy, NIXON IN CHINA Any truly major undertaking in hardly better in the south, where july, 1971 continued with Kissinger's secret by John S. Major China in 1971 had, then, to pass a China nervously patrolled its border mission, and reached a climax with nearly insurmountable test: It had to with India (a notable friend of the he news that President the Shanghai Communique? be something that would be enthusi­ U.S.S.R.) and watched uneasily the Richard Nixon would visit The People's Republic of China in astically carried out by Zhou, that war in Vietnam. China had no choice T "Red China" stunned the 1971 showed a confident face to the would not be sabotaged by Jiang but to encourage, and expensively world. The Japanese (whose govern­ world, but it was in fact a nation Qing, and that would win the support, North Vietnam, but it ment had received no advance warn­ beset by dire political, social, eco­ approval of Mao. If one asks why feared that the war might spill over ing of the announcement) had a nomic, and foreign-policy problems. l China invited Nixon to Beijing, one into southern China, and watched special term for it: "Nixon shock?' The first three years of the Great asks really how that invitation served helplessly as North Vietnam became In the months leading up to the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, J the competing and even contradic­ increasingly a Russian client. visit, Americans struggled to learn from 1966 to 1969, had created tory interests of the principal players Improved relations with the more about a nation that had been havoc in the Chinese Communist in China's power structure. United States could, from Zhou's screened from its view for over two Party, the bureaucracy, industry, It is easiest to see how Nixon's point of view, accomplish a great decades; the world awaited with hope education, and the military, leaving visit served the interest of Zhou deal. By playing the "American what promised to be a major some people exultant, but many Enlai and his allies. As the head of card:' Zhou could give Russia ample realignment of great-power relations. others dazed. The breakdown of China's government, the manager reason to be more cautious, both on In retrospect, Nixon's China ven­ conventional social structures, and responsible for maintaining an even the northern frontier and in its sup­ ture seems much less surprising. the massive cult of personality of keel through the shifting winds of port of Indian border claims. With American views of China had been Mao Zedong orchestrated by Mao's policy emanating from nis party America's tacit concurrence, the slowly shifting since the mid-1960s "closest comrade-in-arms" Lin Biao, chairman and the stormy mass cam­ P.R.C. could accomplish its long­ with increasing numbers of influen­ had turned China into a nation run paigns of the Cultural Revolution, cherished goal of taking over the tial citizens calling for an end to the virtually by fiat by the Chairman. Zhou faced a host of problems that Chinese seat in the United Nations. Bamboo Curtain (at least insofar as Lin himself harbored imperial ambi­ could be alleviated if the United (This in fact happened in the fall of the U.S. could help to tear it down). tions that were to culminate in his States could be persuaded to shift its 1971, even before Nixon arrived in The boldness of the move seemed abortive and still-mysterious attempt attitude toward China from stony China.) Tensions in the Taiwan Strait entirely characteristic of that modern at a coup d'etat. Premier Zhou Enfai President Richard Nixon and Premier Zhou hostility to benign neutrality. could to some extent be brought under Enlai drink a toast durin9 Mr. Nixon's visit to Metternich, Henry Kissinger. Nixon and his group of pragmatists tried, China. UPI!Bettmann Newsphotos. Below: In foreign affairs, Zhou had a lot control. And China could breathe had signalled a shift in his own through it all, to keep the country President Nixon, accompanied by Henry to worry about. Tension along the more easily if America's path out of views as early as 1969, when, for running somehow; on the left, Jiang Kissinaer; in their meetina with Chinese Sino-Soviet frontier, which had led Vietnam could be made smoother. the first time in public, he referred Qing and her associates (to be Communist Party Chairman Mao Zed una. to armed hostilities in 1969, Domestically, too, an opening to to the People's Republic of China by known after 1976 as the infamous Photo: UPI!Bettmann Newsphotos. remained high; China was concerned the United States could accomplish a its proper name. A lifelong anticom­ great deal. China's industrial sector, munist crusader, he (unlike Kennedy crippled by the political turmoil of and johnson) could open a door to the Cuftural Revolution and a do-it­ China with only a minimum of sus­ yourself ideological line that said picion about his motives. With a you need not be expert if you were presidential election fast approach­ sufficiently red, badly needed both ing, Nixon-in-China would appear as American technology and American the Great Statesman on every televi­ markets. The same was perhaps even sion screen in the world. The presi­ dent, for all his faults a master more true with regard to Japan, politician, had pulled off his greatest which could be counted upon to fol­ coup ever. low America's foreign policy lead. Beyond that, the benefits to America And as a politician caught up in a of a thaw in U.S.-China relations serious power struggle, Zhou saw were and remain so obvious as to that his image as a statesman stood have made it virtually inevitable that to be enormously enhanced, if only some American president, some­ he could fend off the inevitable time, would make that trip to Beij­ charges of selling out by dealing ing. But the Chinese side of the with the great monster of interna­ equation is far less clear. What tional imperialism. interest could China, in the midst of But would not Jiang Qing have one of the greatest experiments in pressed those charges, and made socialist radicalism the world had them stick? Yes, and try she did, in 14 ever seen, have had in inviting to the "Criticize Lin Piao, Criticize 15 • siastic; that approval could be car­ fully and selectively fed back to the Chinese people by their leaders to enhance the prestige and authority of their own rule. And what of Mao Zedong? Mao the visionary, the revolutionary romantic, the mercurial mobilizer of the masses, was also Mao the strate­ gist, Mao the realist. Russia's inva­ sion of Czechoslovakia and the promulgation of the Brezhnev Doc­ trine led Mao, as early as 1969, to conclude that the U.S.S. R. posed a more immediate danger to China President Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai attend a BJmnastic peiformance in Bejiin9. than did the United States. Increas­ Photo: UPJ!Bettmann Newsphotos. ingly ill and infirm, he remained astute enough to see that the separate Confucius" [read Zhou Enlai] cam­ 1970s. A smash-hit international and even competing advantages that paigns of 1972 and beyond. But that road show of archaeological treas­ might accrue to Zhou Enlai and Jiang does not mean she would oppose ures overwhelmed, as it was intended Qing from a Nixon visit were all, in the Nixon visit- not if she stood to to do, reports of cultural vandalism the long run, advantages for China. gain by it. The gain consisted in part during the Cultural Revolution. A Mao also had an enormous ego; precisely of ideological ammunition great many American China scholars perhaps he became a believer in his to use against Zhou. But for the try to forget, or recall with acute own cult of personality. It is incon­ Chairman's wife, detente with the embarassment, how they carried ceivable that a Sino-American detente United States provided other oppor­ shoulder-poles laden with earth at could ever haye been initiated tunities as well. the Dazhai model commune, wept by a visit by Mao to Washington. No In the wake of the fall of the Gang with emotion at performances of Chinese emperor had ever visited of Four, it is difficult to think dispas­ "Red Detachment of Women;' and the capital of a foreign nation. To sionately about Jiang Qing and the returned home to spread the good every one of the billion Chinese, and Cultural Revolution. She is routinely news. Markets were crammed with­ to Mao most of all, the symbolism depicted today as a malign, grasping fresh produce by party workers just of the leader of the world's most opportunist; but there is little reason before groups of visitors were due to powerful nation being granted an to think that she was not genuinely pass by, and as swiftly stripped bare audience by China's supreme leader convinced of the correctness of her after they had departed. Visiting was palpable. Nixon's awe-struck great experiment in socialist trans­ journalists wrote of "chance encoun­ reaction to his meeting with Mao formation. The Cultural Revolution ters" with ordinary Chinese who was perhaps satisfying beyond all after all did produce some genuine spoke of their sufferings before expectations. accomplishments (such as a great Liberaton and of their love for The Shanghai Communique of improvemennt in rural public Chairman Mao; every one of them February 27, 1972, is a masterpiece health), and even its horrors could was a plant. (Ordinary citizens, as of diplomatic prose, in which each seem perhaps less awful if one were we now know, were subject to arrest side concedes little and gains much. to view those who suffered as class for exchanging even a word with The visit that produced it was no enemies. A visiting American table foreigners without authorization.) less a masterpiece, with ample cause tennis team, a visiting American All of this seems astonishing, until for self-congratulation on the part of president, and the carefully-screened one recalls that China had over two all concerned. American visitors who would follow thousand years of experience in in years to come could, if properly isolating, controlling, and manipulat­ managed, engender a gigantic shift ing the foreigners in their midst. in world opinion about revolutionary Jiang Qing and her clique were sim­ China. Jiang Qing was a virtuoso in ply unusually adept practioners of a j ohn S. Major received his doctorate in the fi eld of public relations. very old game. International (and history and East Asian lanauanes at Even today it is hard to grasp how especially American) approval of Harvard. He tauaht East Asian history carefully and totally world (and revolutionary China in the wake of at Dartmouth Colleae for thirteen especially American) views of China the Nixon visit was nearly total and years bifore join ina the stqff if The 16 were manipulated in the early sometimes almost hysterically enthu- Asia Society in 1984. • SQUAT THEATER and the Art of Living

by Don Shewey

A scenejrom Squat Theater's Dreamland Bums. Photo: The Washington Times. Sheryl Sutton and Peter Halasz in Squat Theater's Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free. Phow: Roe DiBona.

from other theaters is its dialectical Critic Gautam Dasgupta has des­ ground and over a period of four exploration of public space and pri­ cribed Squat's work in Performing years created more than a dozen vate space, theater and film, found Arts journal as "spectacles, concen­ pieces to be shown in unofficial per­ texts and original music, fiction and trated in their energy, intense in the formance spaces, usually the fifth­ autobiography, fantasy and reality. performers' commitment to the task floor apartment of Peter Halasz and Like many of its peers in the con­ at hand, and yet somehow incomplete Anna Koos. These ranged from temporary experimental theater, because of their refusal to render up scripted original works (Seven Clown such as the Wooster Group, Mabou an overt message ... .There is no Stories, 1972) to unplanned happen­ Mines, and Ping Chong's Fiji Com­ message, Squat seems to be telling ings (Seven Days in a Sand Mine, pany, Squat does not present con­ us; living (or rather, living aesthet­ 1972) to elaborate paratheatrical ventional narrative plays with ically) is aW' They operate on the spectacles such as King Kong (1973), characters and dialogue. Instead, belief that, to make sense of the which took three days to perform. their theater pieces consist of some­ world, the artist's task-in the words Unlike underground "living-room times abruptly disjunctive sequences of Franz Kafka, who has been called theaters" elsewhere in Eastern Europe of events, images, texts, and music "the guiding spirit of Squat's art'~ is -such as Czech playwright Pavel that ask to be experienced visually "to sit at your window when evening Kohout's in Prague-this was not a and emotionally rather than logically falls and dream it to yourself1" political theater created primarily to or intellectually. The work is often Squat Theater's work is inextricable foster veiled criticism of a repressive extremely personal, though not con­ from the unique personal history of regime; its concerns were more fessional; because the performers its members, who first began work­ interpersonal, psychosexual, and clearly contribute to the perfor­ ing together as a nameless collective philosophical. "Working on the mance their own experi en ce~'the in Budapest in 1969. Their identity edges of society, Squat from the out­ guts and blood of our own life;' as was solidified in 1972 when govern­ set made a beeline for the taboo, the one member puts it-there is an ment authorities withdrew the absurd, the mysterious-utilizing almost documentary realism to the group's license to perform after a imagery that could be mined on the acting style. Yet out of seemingly single performance of a play entitled frontiers of the psyche;• Kathleen mundane behavior, the most fantas­ The Skanzen Killers at the Kassack Hulser wrote in American Theater. tic images can erupt: a man in Culture House was deemed "In Squat's oeuvre, dreams unfold flames, a sexual transformation, a "obscene" and "apt to be misinter­ not on a wistful terrain of imaginary puppet that comes to life. The sub­ preted from a political point of fu lfi llment but rather in a kingdom ject matter is never so simple and view?' The following year, when of mutilations, perversions, and specific that it can be summarized members of the group attended the strange transformations?' Yet in such in a sentence. Rather, the nature of Open Theater Festival in Wroclaw, circumstances, the personal is Squat's work is philosophical. Poland, and gave a spontaneous, inevitably political. Their final Examining the smallest, most practi­ anarchic performance, their pass­ production in Budapest was an cal questions about how to live, it ports were confiscated by the adaption of The Three Sisters in also encounters the largest Hungarian government. Officially which Chekhov's title characters 18 metaphysical questions about life. censored, the group went under- were played by three men-a comic • distancing, yet the lines about the the Dead;' Warhol/Balint inter­ a robot danced, Eva Buchmuller sisters' leaving home and going to viewed a naked, obese witch who sang a classical rendition of James Moscow were full of meaning and performed an incantational ritual. Brown's "Sex Machine;' two soldiers poignance to those who knew the During this last section, a curtain screeched up in a jeep to deliver a performers would soon be leaving was drawn revealing the storefront wounded comrade to the storefront, home for good. window so the audience could view and Peter Halasz and Sheryl Sutton They left for Paris in 1976 like a passersby and-more imporant-people performed the title song, a hot rap ragtag group of wandering minstrels, on the street could witness the curi­ number: "Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free/ almost literally a family circus: ous events taking place inside. Fuck fuck fuck beneath the Stephan Balint, Marinne Kollar, and Which was "theater"? Which was Christmas tree!" For both the per­ their daughter Eszter; Peter Halasz, "real life"? Who were the performers, formers and the audience, the piece Anna Koos, and their son Galus; Eva and who were the spectators? Squat had the immediacy of a page ripped Buchmuller and her daughters Borbala Theater strives to create moments from a diary....!'This is junk-culture/ and Rebecca (her ex-husband where such questions are both media/Street-life in America in remained in Hungary); Peter Breznyik unavoidable and unanswerable. 1981'!....yet an enigmatic quality as and Klara Palotai. But by the time "They believe that actors have well. The individual elements were they arived in New York-after the become mere vehicles for ideas and ecstatic reception of their work in recognizable, yet the connections England, France, Holland, and at the ideologies which remain separated between them remained elusive, New Theater Festival in Baltimore­ from the lives of both performers located as they were in the flux of they were Squat Theater, named for and spectators;' wrote critic Theodore the performers' lives. their ability to create a theater and a Shank. "In an age when there is no Pia, Warhol, and Mr. Dead were home from unoccupied space. Pia, engulfing cosmic drama (mythology) revived in 1982 in a retrospective Child, Fire!, Squat's first expatriate inextricably relating people and called "The Golden Age of Squat piece, was a compendium of domes­ events, Squat is committed to Theater:' After that, things changed. tic scenes, confrontational street­ presenting the resultant abyss:' Mariane Kollar had left the group theater, surrealistic images, and The company continued to drama­ shortly after arriving in New York readings from Dostoevsky and Artaud, tize the abyss with Mr. Dead and Mrs. and her roles were taken by Agnes some of which had previously been Free, which began with a series of Santha, who is Peter Halasz's wife. used in Budapest performances. filmed vignettes and ended with the When the company lost its lease on Because they first performed Pia, unveiling of a twelve-foot papier­ the 23rd Street theater and living Child, Fire! in Rotterdam in an mache baby wearing stereo head­ quarters, Halasz and Santha left empty store with living space phones with TV monitors for eyes, Squat to fo rm Love Theater. Anna upstairs, they sought a similar from which punk-rock chanteuse Koos remained with Squat through arrangement in New York and found Nico sang a lounge arrangement of Dreamland Burns before leaving the it at 256 West 23rd Street. "New York, New York:' In between, group to pursue filmmaking. From the Andy Warhol's Last Lave, the com­ pany's first American work, made full use of the storefront theater. Divided into three parts, the piece began with "Aliens on the Second Floor" in which the audience sat watching Stephan Balint and Eva Buchmuller in their living space (now American citizens, they were then indeed aliens living on the sec­ ond floor) listening to an interplane­ tary radio dispatch from German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, who even­ tually made an appearance (played by Anna Koos wearing a tinfoil­ covered dildo strapped to her head like an antenna). The second section consisted of a film of Andy Warhol (played by Balint) riding through lower Manhattan on a horse while the soundtrack played a reading of Kafka's "An Imperial Message:' In the third section, "Interview with Squat Th eater in Pig, Child, Fire! Photo: MarcEneuerrand. 19 total collaboration of Pig, Child, Fire!, praying man turning into a tree. achieve the same effect:' Squat reorganized itself around After the film is over, one of the Observing the high quality and Stephan Balint as writer-director and girls appears onstage and has a prominent placement of the film Eva Buchmuller as visual designer with strangely romantic conversation with footage in works such as Dreamland crucial ongoing contributions from the tree-man. Burn s, one begins to suspect that Peter Breznyik (now Peter Berg) and Certain elements have come and Squat would gladly go into making Eszter Balint, who starred in Jim gone in Squat's work. The use of movies if they had the resources, Jarmusch's independent film Stranger fire, once a company trademark, has an impression they do not deny. than Paradise and became the central steadily diminished, while the "Movies are what theater once was performer in Dreamland Burns. amount of spoken text has and could be again-movies are As a result of these changes, the increased, to some extent simply important," said Balint. "They create group's recent work looks quite because the performers' command the mythology of the present:' different from its earlier pieces. For of the English language has "Especially here in America, where one thing, Dreamland Burns was improved. A constant throughout, movie characters are heroes;' added Squat's first piece created for a however, is the use of film-an ele­ Buchmuller. "Theater is a special proscenium theater. Not that it was ment which reflects many of Squat thing;' Balint said, "but movies are conventional, by any means. The Theater's deepest preoccupations, so tightly connected to the culture­ first half was a film about a day in not the least of which is a relish for at-large. They speak to the largest num­ the life of a young immigrant, paradox and contradiction, In a ber of people. We also want to find played by Ms. Balint. At the end of recent conversation, Stephan Balint a common language important enough the day, when she laid down her and Eva Buchmuller readily produced to communicate with everyone:' head to go to sleep, the film half a dozen reasons for their attrac­ Neither film nor theater alone, appeared to burn up, and the play tion to incorporating film in theater. however, can achieve the simple yet continued with the appearance on Although Balint noted that "every mysterious effect of the devils in L stage of the actors in the film : some time we do a new piece, we always Train to Eldorado. We usually think of them live and some represented have the tendency to put people to of devils as imaginary beings in hor­ by life-sized sculptures onto which sleep and then wake them up again;' ror movies and fairy tales, not crea­ were projected talking heads. The he pointed out that they have never tures you're likely to encounter film was seamlessly realistic, while used film the same way twice. face-to-face. But Squat Theater the play was not. Chairs and a chan­ "In Andy Warhol's Last Love, we reverses the situation: the devils are delier fell from the ceiling, a two­ used film to play with the differ­ visible onstage as a crew of film­ dimensional taxicab popped up, ences between what was happening makers, and when the film rolls they gangsters appeared and killed one of onscreen, onstage, on the street-to are nowhere to be seen. Yet the film the sculpture-characters by sawing refresh perceptions;• he said, itself is proof of their powerful pres­ him in half, and a shrine to the Virgin whereas in Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free, ence. This unsettling interplay of Mary descended for a final tableau. the content of the film was unim­ film and theater captures what may The new work, L Train to Eldorado, portant. "It was a theater gag;' be the essence of Squat's work: the shares some of the same themes and Buchmiller said. "We wanted to have paradoxical reality of fantasy-the devices as Dreamland Burns. A post­ the feeling of sitting in the dark and effect on our lives, for instance, of coital conversion between a man have theater jump out at you:' The invisible forces such as evil and love. and a woman (represented by technique of projecting film onto Their theater uses concrete images super-8 films projected on bas-relief dummies (inspired by a display at to present a poetic vision of the masks) becomes a break-up. The the New York center for the Mormon world born from sitting at the win­ rejected man seeks consolation from Church across from Lincoln Center) dow when evening falls and dream­ a neighborhood butcher and from also has different meanings with ing it to themselves. his mother yet winds up alone in an every use. Speaking of its use in abandoned lot on the Lower East Dreamland Burns, Balint said, "We Side, praying to God for help. A always like to animate objects. It's crew of devils is filming him, and the Frankenstein effect-very theatri­ Don Shewey is a journalist and theater the director stops the actor and asks cal. "Meanwhile, in L Train to critic who writes for the New York him to perform his agonized prayer Eldorado, the faces are twice as big Times and the Village Voice. His more believably. When the director as the actors' real heads. "I think of books include Sam Shepard (Dellj, is satisfied, the crew retires, a movie it like a medium shot in a movie;' Caught in the Act: New York Actors screen descends, and the film is said Buchmuller. "In Greek theater, Face to Face (with Susan Shacter; shown of the story so far. The film the actors walked on high heels and NAL), and Out Front (an anthology if continues wtih scenes of two girls wore huge masks to become larger gay and lesbian plays to be published 20 leaving a movie theater and the than life. Today we can use film to in 1988 by Grove Press). ever mind it's july, the hottest weekend of the N summer. Never mind that in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's attic rehearsal room there's no air conditioning, no fan, no window. by M. Elizabeth Osborn Dressed in red nylon running shorts, red tank top and white Reeboks, Liz Swados is ready for action. For the past year she has been working with a group of fou rteen young musicians, developing her new piece Swing to the point at which she is ready to include up to ten more kids. Three grueling days of auditions should enable her to find at least some of them. In any event, she explains, the auditions serve as continuing research for the piece, and provide a learning experience for everyone involved. The youngsters are brought up to the sweltering attic in batches, sometimes fewer than ten of them, sometimes more than twenty. They come from all over the New York area. More than half of them. are black, many of the rest Hispanic, a few Asian-American. Several are very young, barely old enough to be in school; several have already gradu­ ated from the High School of Per­ forming Arts, and bring picture and resume. Most are in between. All are as clean and shining as can be, dressed up in fresh, bright, carefully casual summer garb. Each group, standing in a circle of the middle of the space, is in for a workout. Liz Swados drives these prospects hard and herself harder. She talks to them at length, urging them to see if they can do, if they want to do what she asks without judging each other or themselves, without feeling they have failed if they're not chosen. Inside the ring now, Swados keeps circling hypnoti­ cally. She wants the kids, each in turn, to chant their name and a fact about themselves to the beat of longtime collaborator Leopoldo Fleming's conga drumming; she matter-of-factly gives mildfy exotic examples: "My name is Liz Swados and I have a tattoo on my right l Photo: Tom Brazil. hand. My name is Liz Swados and I ,r Swing durinB rehearsa . have four pierced ears and three ear- 21 Membersojthecast

rings:' Some groups are awkwardly power, explains that she has taken and Dad has completely changed;' assembled, a hulking teen ill at ease the youngsters to Africa to learn the begins Swados. "I kept thinking of a amidst children, an eight-year-old dances of their people. "I've seen dance floor, of Mom and Dad as a surrounded by adolescents, but about twelve million kids in the last couple, as dancing partners breaking Swados explains that she works with twenty years and you are really apart:' She also found herself con­ all ages at once, treats everyone something;' Swados tells them. "I templating a jazz band as an exactly the same. hope you know that:' interesting metaphor for the family, Getting right in each kid's face (big It's even hotter the next day, "because you play together but you kids find themselves compelled to Sunday, but Swados's energy never play completely apart, and your con­ get down in hers), she commands flags. "I couldn't be this way unless I nections are subtle:' Noting that them to imitate her nonsense sylla­ was an Olympic athlete in my jazz is coming back into rock-and­ bles exactly, listening for reproduc­ spirit;' she tells the kids. Today is roll, that ballroom dancing is being tion of pitch intervals, rhythm. callbacks, which means she has done in discos, Swados began to Round and round the circle, up and larger groups, more energy to sum­ focus on these juxtapositions as down the scale, now shouting, now mon and to channel for much reflective of our time, in which whispering, Swados goads the young­ longer stretches. Saturday standouts domestic anarchy coexists with a sters to match her energy. Alterna­ are back, mingled with new fundamentalist reassertion of old­ tively, she has them answer rather attention-getters: an attractive young fashioned values. By combining ball­ than imitate, in whatever mode they ispanic unleases power the room dancing of the '30s and '40s choose, from tap to scat. "Tell me a moment she starts to dance; another and mellow jazz with "super hard­ lie;' she orders, going around again. dancer, a tall black kid with a gold core punk rock-and-roll funk and "I'm white;' announces one boy. "I earring, moves with pure delight. A rapping;' she thought "we would once was blind but now I can see;' young man from Staten Island who find out a lot about the blueprint of says another. They pass a cap in specializes in bicycle stunts silently American family life:' rhythm. They each sing one line of shows off his routine, wrenching Dedicated to the workshop method any song they like. ''God bless himself and the bike around and of making music theater, Liz Swados America, land that I love;' offers one around with balletic grace and bal­ assembled her young musicians, small girl. They jump up and down ance. Swados teaches one particu­ added a pair of oldtime ballroom larly musical group an Indian raga, for several minutes, rest briefly (only dancers-Reagan contemporaries, an as a concession to the heat, Swados singing the strange intervals over important element of the orchestra­ tells them), jump so~e more, showing and over until the youngsters start tion of the piece-and set to work. Swados how energet c they can be. to pick them up, explaining that she Together they dove into their lives, Between groups Swados has little uses it for relaxation and focus. She more than a moment to sit, swig tells another group the story of Icarus and one of the images that kept from a Hawaiian punch ttle, make before dividing them into groups of being brought up, says Swados, was a comment or two before she gets five to devise a presentation in the welfare hotel. Perhaps because up and does it all again. Rnd again. which each member will step for­ company members passed occupants "I am looking for people w'bo have ward and perform a brief solo of the one across- the street from imagination and guts, who have depicting the theme of flying too BAM, hanging out on the steps, energy and are brave;' she announces. high. One by one kids chant, drum, every time they came to ehearsal. "What acting is to me is doing dance; grow frenzied; fall on the Perhaps because the kids are troubled something-without being afraid of it:' floor. "This is the best show I've by their encounters with disturbed Late in the afternoon of the second seen all year;' responds Swados. and homeless people on the streets. day, a real group appears, the Marie Perhaps because homes breaking up, Brooks Caribbean Dance Theater. • people having to move, "the whole There are enough of these excep­ Elizabeth Swados is thirty-six now, itinerant modern urban society" tionally attractive performers, who small-boned and slender, but hardly seem to be a fact of contemporary range in age from eight to twenty­ as tiny or as long-haired as previ­ life, muses Swados. In this way Swing one, to form a good-sized circle, and ously published descriptions lead found its setting-a place where they respond smartly as Liz Swados you to expect. In her Mercer Street everyone lives, each in a little room puts them through their paces. "I'm loft the afternoon after the auditions defined by a broken television set; a twelve years old and I love to s e.feeds her parrot and then sits place where people keep packing dance!" chants one girl with such down to explain the orgins of Swing. and unpacking, moving in and out, exuberant assurance that Swados Like her acclaimed 1978 work playing a fonn of musical chairs. tells her she's remarkably confident. Runaways, created under the spon­ After the workout Swados asks the sorship of joseph Papp at the Public "This is what I choose to do to troupe to do one of their own num­ Theater and then moved to Broadway, pay back what has been a privileged bers, and sits close, cross-legged, Swing is centrally concerned with career;' says Swad0s, who won an drinking it in. Marie Brooks, an the fragmentation of the family. Obie for he :.music for Andrei Serban's 22 older woman who radiates quiet "The 1940s-'50s version of Mom Medea before she'd graduated from • Elizabeth Swados. Photo: Tom Arma.

Bennington. Scores for The Trojan years old-skateboard around the Women and Electra, the other two attic, which now has a big fan in parts of Serban's TriloBJ-revived to each corner to keep people reasonably great acclaim this past season at comfortable. A trio of musicians La Mama-were soon followed by jams until the stage manager silences Nightclub Cantata, the first of her them. The director/writer/composer own pieces. When she was twenty­ can use a little quiet. seven, Liz Swados received five Tony company in a circle,_ following The rehearsal resumes promptly nominations for Runaways. Alice in with a re-formed circle, a few words Swados through a vocal warmup Concert, Dispatches, Haggadah, with practiced ease. Soon she breaks about eating properly, and move­ Doonesbury, Rap Master Ronnie, Beau­ off to show them why she wants ment warmups. Each youngster has tiful lady, films, novels, countless scores them to open their mouths, first get­ to come up with a movement-sound -a startling list of achievements for ting them giggling with devastating combination that the whole group such a young artist. In addition to imitations of mush-mouthed rockers, can do. Whatever it is, Swados Runaways her work with young per­ then riveting them with the power makes them commit their bodies to formers includes The Incredible Feel­ of her opened-up renditions of it. Mama Lu Parks, a kindly, ing Show and What Do Children several songs, from "Amazing Grace" rounded woman in a golden Pisces Think if the Bomb, a film made for to "My Baby Loves the Hanky­ T-shirt, appears, and suddenly the PBS four years ago, "I'm always Panky:' They belt out the rock lyric circle resolves into male-female watching young people;' she says. together, but soon each in turn has pairs, with the three ten-year-olds in "I'm interested to see how they to carry on a dialogue with Swados, the center. The pianist and the come to their perceptions. If I look drummer play up a storm, and the who claps out of beat and corrects at what they are doing I can see the every hint of sloppy diction. dancing begins. Some of the kids are seeds of all sorts of things in this Glad to be free of this particular sensational, some are game. Parks country-not fads, but waves of per­ discipline, the kids hustle for their teaches combinations-kick, kick, ception, or metaphor:' The emo­ instruments-piano, drums, guitar, double kick/kick, kick, double tional life of the nonverbal bass, tuba, trombone, saxophone, kick/step kick, step kick, step kick, generation- "the least politically con­ flute-and their notebooks when step step-and the dancers flash scious group of people that ever Swados shifts to work on songs. Still through them. Next thing you know walked on the earth'!.... is best rev­ in a circle, but finally able to sit she has the girls doing back flips, ealed, Swados has decided, through down, the cast launches into a one hand on their partners' shoulder. details: "a doughnut, a lock on the Brecht-Weill kind of piece, a power­ After the dancing, more assertive­ door, two notes on a saxophone, a ful expression of the disturbed ness training. Swados moves around Lindy step:' Troubled by their apa­ denizens of the Swing world: "Don't the circle, planting a foot on one of thy, she is excited by their skills. you come inside my head/Don't you the feet sticking out at her, refusing "Talk about chops. The playing, the come in here alone/It's a dangerous to budge until the foot's owner dancing, the coordination, the body hotel/You'd better stay away:' They exhibits originality and command in work, the understanding of proceed to a new song..!'very Elvis delivering the assigned line: "Get off technique- they are unbelievable:' Presley;' says Swados, who is revising my feet!" This turns out to be the • it as she goes along. The refrain is opening of yet another song, which "It's been (blank) rough years;' each is fo llowed by runthroughs of several "It's a good sport going on out singer filling in his or her own age. more. "Just swing, swing through it;' there, this sport of music and mov­ The band instantly accompanies the sings the company, apparently thriv­ ing around and having emotions. composer, so enthusiastically that ing on Liz Swados's formidable dis­ We're in training for Swing." A five­ she keeps shushing them so the cipline and ready respect. Liz and hour workout one day in August, singers can learn the melody. the kids, you feel sure, will be pre­ during the second week of rehearsals Swados tries out various soloists for pared to do just that. with the augmented company, the verses, pushing them to sound demonstrates what Liz Swados means. mean, harsh, dramatic. Finally they The rehearsal makes clear that her turn to another number, a clever stated goals for the instrumentalists­ piece about the monsters "outside M. Elizabeth Osborn is Book Editor at 'clean tones, fast movement, the door;' evidently written by one Th eatre Communications Group, where informed harmonies, and choices of of the young men in the company. her current project is On New solos that are generous and ener­ After nearly two hours they take a Ground, an antholoBY if contem­ getic but not narcissistic'!....apply by half-hour break for lunch. The porary Hispanic-American plays. She extension to the entire production. teenagers dash to McDonald's, the wrote about Ping Chongjor On the The day's work begins with the smallest kids- three boys about ten NEXT WAVE last fall. 23 The Eyes Have It by Robert Greskovic

n 1898, as part of an interview for the New York Herald, I Isadora Duncan remarked: "In dance it is the eye that brings the meaning to us:' In 1945, for an essay on choreog­ raphy, George Balanchine wrote: "The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye-and the audience, in its turn, must train itself actually to see what is per­ formed upon the stage:' In 1986, during an informal inter­ view at the Guggenheim Museum in conversation about her work and her art, Karole Armitage said, with­ out any undo emphasis or ponder­ ousness, "and I'm concerned that the work look good:'

TheArmiraae Ballet in The Elizabethan Phrasing of the Late Albert Ayler. Photo:Monr oe Warshaw. With this casual comment, refer­ ring to concern for the way her dance work looks, Armitage was no doubt doing little more than saying what came naturally to her mind. She was, nevertheless, making a sig­ nificant and personal statement at the same time. One of the hallmarks of Armitage's career to date, as per­ former and as choreographer, has been an emphasis on visual values. From her early years as an obedient but distinctive member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to her present position as performer and dancemaker for her own company, Armitage has consistently main­ tained a careful emphasis on the essential visual impact of her work. In this way, and in spite of the good number of years Armitage has spent creating and performing her work in Europe, her aesthetic out­ look is essentially American. "I really feel that what I do is so American;' Armitage said a couple of years ago as she was beginning to make a concerted effort to have her choreography shown in the States, and to throw off the by this time tired cliche that the Kansas-reared ballerina was primarily a product of punk-rock culture. As a self-named descendant of influences received from George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, the dance giants she refers to as "the two big American classicists;' Armitage remains more concerned with dance values that KaroleArmitaoe andjo seph Lennon in The Watteau Duets. exist specifically for the eye to take in than with theatrical conceits that spring from concept and/or program to support the theory at hand, that to be watched and followed carefully, notes, for the mind to make some­ David Salle's decor for The Elizabethan for itself, are other of Salle's visual thing else of. Despite all the time Phrasina qf the Late Albert Ayler elements. His subsequent back-drops Armitage spent working in Europe, (which has its New York premiere for the work's ensuing sections primarily in France, her creative this season as part of the 1987 include images of lamp fixtures as heart has remained keyed to the NEXT WAVE Festival) includes an well as a strangely illuminated American sensibilities she acquired eye as a dominant image. The huge dragon. Furthermore, his costumes, in her early training and her initial hazel eye looking out from Salle's always beautifully surfaced and professional career. (She started stage asks nothing more fancy by its body-revealing in a manner of fact dancing in Kansas with Tomi Wortham, presence than for its audience to way, include some tutus which are a former New York City Ballet look back at it and, of course, at the constructed to function as lamp­ dancer, danced for a while with a dancing that takes place beyond shades. Therefore, whatever other Balanchine-affiliated company in and/or in front of it. Salle's eye has intentions motivated Salle in choos­ Geneva, Switzerland, and was a no intention other than its precise, ing the images that make up his member of Cunningham's company actual existence amidst the space decor, another logic also remains, for five years.) and sound of Armitage's choosing. and that is the sense that his designs I find it pertinent, though, I has­ Related to this end in the actuality throw light on Armitage's dance­ ten to add, not necessarily intended of Armitage's dance, which is meant the better for us to see it. 25 Looking good, according to ist, whereby she created works with Armitage, does not necessarily mean dancers seen, in general, as solitary, looking traditional. The classicism of individual performers. As she her dance vision is discernible but worked up to her present phase and not strictly fam iliar. In 1981, for one especially as she became involved of her early group creations, she with working her female dancers on chose the name Drastic Classicism, pointe, Armitage has become after the nature of her unorthodox increasingly concerned with the sup­ experiments with a certain kind of ported work of partnering, and most formalism. Over the years since specifically with the classic form of then, Armitage has continued to the pas de deux. In the context of play with the silhouette, the balance, Armitage's choreographic career thus and the accent of the classical far, this development seems to pro­ legacy she has acquired from her ceed logically out of her naturally experiences with Cunningham's and watchful attention to what needs Balanchine's work; she is not, how­ doing from one piece to the next. ever, motivated in any way to It is easy to view Armitage's recent destroy any of our notions of classi­ interest in developing duets as an cal dancing, but rather, in her own organic fo llowthrough of her desire words, "to extend them, with new to explore classicism's pointework. David Salle. Photo: Leon van Velzen. concepts, with new shapes?' Given Armitage's expressed interest Specifically, Armitage has fre­ in how her work looks, I can readily quently concentrated in her imagine the process that brought choreography on the footwork, and her to her present exploration of even more particularly on the foot­ partnering, doublework, and pas de wear for dancing. In the world of deux: pointework lends a precari­ Drastic Classicism she and her ousness of stability, which demands dancers departd from the norm of other kinds of outside support. It is Cunninghamian barefeet by working not coincidental, for example, in the in jazz oxfords. By 1983, with a two­ history of classical dancing that the act work called Paradise, which pas de deux form acquired a matu­ involved a semi-narrative plan of rity and a complexity in the last part action, she had become involved, for of the 19th century when Marius a select part of this piece, with a use Petipa, Balletmaster of Russia's of ballet's pointework (and, of course, Imperial Ballet, became increasingly its pointeshoe). Subsequent to this, interested in the female dancer and in 1985, she created a work out of a in the relatively new-found expertise series of duets (originally called of pointe technique. -P=dH/dq and then called Watteau Armitage's matter-of-fact concern Duets) and for it performed in a vari­ that her dance works look good ety of different shoes, ranging from necessarily keeps her watchful, and stiletto-heeled pumps to pointeshoes. that watchfulness serves a useful By late 1986, when she was launch­ double purpose. In her process ing her first full-scale company (as Armitage keeps one eye on her work opposed to working with varying in behalf of her audience, making numbers of dancers from concert to aesthetic choices she believes will be concert), Armitage had begun to see interesting to her viewers. By keep­ pointework as a given and as an ing another eye on her work, from automatic part of her performing its own point of view, she remains and choreographic range. attuned to its most logical growth, Parallel to the variation she has allowing its progression to be made explored regarding the use of steadily, from the inside, developing dancers' feet, and consequently of out of its very own momentum. dancers' shoes, Armitage has been evolving the way she chooses to show herself, and her dancers, to her audience in the context of her dances. Earlier on, she was largely Robert Greskovic writes about dance 26 concerned with the dancer as solo- for a number if publications. 15th Century: Lorenzo de Medici and his family 1508: Pope Julius II commissions Michelangelo 1717: George I is honored by the composition lead the cultural floweri ng of Florence. tO paint the Sistine ceiling. of Handel's Water Music

18th Century: Thomas Jefferson becomes 1829: Jan1cs Smithson of London bequeaths his 1892: Andrew Carnegie provides the funds a noted patron of the arts. forrune tO the U.S. tO establish a museum. to build Camegic Hall.

Manufacturers Hanover is pleased to carry on the tradition of private sponsorship of the arts for the benefit of the public.

VA MANUFACTURERS ~HANOVER

Among the recent events which Manufacturers. Hanover helped !11ake possible: The VatiCan Collections: The Papacy and Art, Metropolitan Museum of~, Spnng 1984; Van Gogh mAr~, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall_1 984; Treasum from The New York Public Library, Spnng 198 :>_. Two ongomg progran1s for which we proVIde support are the Amencan Ballet Theater and the subntle progran1 of the New York Ctty Opera. Brooklyn Academy of Music Non-Profit Org. 30 Lafayette Avenue U.S. Postage Brooklyn, NY 11217-1486 PAID Brooklyn Academy of Music