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 <if The Mahabharata. assistance of the Brooklyn Borough Presi­ 2 Photos © 1987byMarthaSwope. dent's Office and the Office of the Mayor. • The 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.