The composer David Lang just lately danced the hora on the marriage ceremony of a relative — a homosexual Orthodox soon-to-be rabbi who married his homosexual Orthodox rabbi boyfriend. “It was totally joyous and totally frum,” he mentioned, utilizing the Yiddish phrase for religious.
“I love that you said frum,” mentioned the choreographer Pam Tanowitz, including: “I live for the hora. I’ll go anywhere and do a hora.”
Lang grew up doing Israeli people dances; Tanowitz didn’t, however she was fascinated by the shape. “I would look up on YouTube how to do certain steps, then I would make up all my own phrases,” she mentioned. “I became obsessed with it.”
The two artists had been kibitzing at a cafe in Soho just lately about their shared Jewish heritage forward of the premiere of “Song of Songs,” their newest collaboration, impressed by the biblical poem of love and lust that’s typically interpreted as a metaphor for religion. The evening-length work was commissioned by Bard College, the place Tanowitz is the resident choreographer, and can have its debut on the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts there, Friday by means of Sunday.
Four years in the past at Bard, Tanowitz introduced her critically acclaimed “Four Quartets” based mostly on the T.S. Eliot poem. It adopted 2017’s “New Work for Goldberg Variations,” set to Bach, and Tanowitz noticed similarities between the 2. She contemplated, she mentioned, a trilogy utilizing one other piece of historic music or textual content that she might “rub up against.”
She additionally famous that each Eliot and Bach, to various levels, have been tainted by antisemitism and mentioned she realized, “I need to make a Jewish dance.”
And then that impulse grew to become extra private: Her father died, a brief time after the premiere of “Four Quartets.” She started considering a lot concerning the kaddish, she mentioned, the Jewish prayer of mourning, and remembered Lang’s incantatory 2014 piece “Just (After Song of Songs),” composed of quotations from the poem. “It touched me,” she mentioned of Lang’s music. “I was very moved by it. And I just thought, OK, let’s do it.”
She contacted Lang, with whom she had labored in 2015, about collaborating. He was sport however hesitant about returning to “Song of Songs,” as he had created music based mostly on it twice earlier than. “I had to think of some other ways to read this piece,” he mentioned. He dove again in and located extra phrases, photos and concepts that spoke to him. “It’s just such a rich text,” he mentioned.
He ended up composing three new songs that, together with “Just (After Song of Songs),” will make up the rating for his or her “Song of Songs,” accompanying Tanowitz’s marriage of classical, modern and people motion, which shifts focus from the person to the collective.
Gideon Lester, the creative director of the Fisher Center, mentioned “Song of Songs” portrays “a community of dancers in a kind of courtyard space.” He additionally praised the best way Tanowitz seamlessly blends dance kinds in her motion. “In each of her dances,” he mentioned, “you get a history of dance.”
At the cafe, Tanowitz and Lang talked about their method to collaboration and the enduring impression of their Jewish upbringings. These are edited excerpts from the dialog.
How did the collaboration work? Did you research “Song of Songs” collectively and focus on how you’d every method it?
DAVID LANG Some collaborators are type of in one another’s faces, however the collaborations I get pleasure from probably the most are those the place somebody says: “Music can play a really big role in this piece, and I don’t do music. So, you look at this and respond to it.”
PAM TANOWITZ I’m not going to inform David what phrases to put in his textual content. That’s not fascinating to me. David’s music is ideal for dance, it’s so lovely and efficient, the best way it could possibly create an surroundings and a house for the dance to dwell in.
Pam, you probably did a lot of analysis into Jewish dance forward of this mission, together with by means of a fellowship on the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2020. What did you’re taking away from that?
TANOWITZ I grew to become obsessive about Jewish choreographers. But if you say you’re going to research Jewish dance, what are you finding out? Are you finding out Jewish choreographers that had been fashionable dancers? Are you finding out Israeli people dance? Are you finding out Israeli choreographers now, like Ohad Naharin?
It’s so unspecific if you say Jewish dance. So I kind of dabbled in a little little bit of every thing. And then I learn the poem. And then I ended studying. And then I danced. I travel. I steadiness between analysis and dancing. And I’m not doing something literal.
LANG What’s actually fascinating to me about your items is they’re formal and they’re about one thing as properly. You have to take a look at them intently and then you definately understand, Oh, wait a sec, there’s something happening right here. But it’s not the floor of the piece. I’ve to work out what the story is, beneath all of this formalism.
TANOWITZ I try this on function. Because I require audiences to make investments one thing in it. It’s necessary for me to not alienate audiences, but in addition I believe they’re smarter. And I believe they are often engaged.
David, do you see your self working in a Jewish music custom?
LANG I’m not in a Jewish music custom. And I’m not that non secular, however it’s massively necessary to my tradition and background. But I’m tremendous interested by what all of this affect and all of my non secular ancestors have contributed to me and my relationship to music.
I positively really feel like I grew to become a musician partly as a result of there was music in my temple rising up. The cantor’s voice was lovely. If the cantor’s voice was not good, I don’t assume I might have been a musician.
Pam, did your upbringing depart a comparable mark in your artwork?
TANOWITZ I discovered all of the songs and all of the prayers after I was very younger, and if you be taught every thing younger, it sticks with you. But, like David, I’m not non secular. But my dad grew up orthodox. As David was speaking about remembering the cantor and remembering the music, I might stroll into a Conservative temple and I might begin singing the prayers. It’s so inside my physique. At these moments after I’m at a bat mitzvah or marriage ceremony doing a hora, or reciting the Kaddish, it takes me without warning and I’m overwhelmed. I really feel linked someway.
You made a video throughout your library fellowship that referenced creative influences like Jerome Robbins and Fanny Brice. Do they present up in “Song of Songs,” even when in unrecognizable methods?
TANOWITZ David Gordon was certainly one of my mentors. I used to be so fortunate to be in his piece at MoMA and I acquired to do a solo of his as he sang [Brice’s] “Second Hand Rose.” I did it three or 4 occasions, and I didn’t know whether or not to giggle or cry. He sang it with a Yiddish accent. That felt the identical as going to temple to me.
It’s all in there, my historical past, my Jewish historical past, my dance historical past — my mentors, my collaborators. I’ve a grapevine [weaving footwork that appears in many Israeli folk dances] in each single certainly one of my dances. Because it’s my favourite step. Do it sluggish, do it quick, do it in every single place.
Had you beforehand acknowledged the Jewish affect in your work?
TANOWITZ No, that’s new. And the opposite factor I used to be going to say is it’s not solely simply Jewish steps. How do these so-called Jewish steps speak to the ballet steps and the trendy steps and the pedestrian and the postmodern? All these completely different lexicons are speaking and there’s a dialogue there. But I’m Jewish and I’m a choreographer, so it’s Jewish. And David is Jewish and a composer.
LANG I don’t know what the Jewish is although.
TANOWITZ Just that you’re Jewish.
