The Bonds of Harmony
1.4 هزار بار بازدید -
2 سال پیش
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In 1997, my wife Faina
In 1997, my wife Faina commissioned Fried de Metz Herman to write a dance in honor of my 50th birthday. The result was The Bonds of Harmony, a longways duple minor, set to a Manx tune in triple time. Its distinguishing figure is the Russian Gypsy, two words that are rather fraught at this time in history but that were chosen to honor Faina (in the video, 1W, very top of the set), who was born in Moscow. Its unique character is that one couple dances as a close unit executing the figure with another dancer, who is alone. It is important for this dance, with its many layers of theater and meaning, that the movement not appear like three dancers in a single file circle, and I'm grateful that the dancers of the 2022 Lenox Assembly worked hard to achieve this crucial look.
What creates the powerful emotional effects of this dance? Surely, it's the music. But also, the three stages of developing intimacy that the dance's figures create with novel uses of eye contact, orientation, and distance:
1) A beginning of emotional distance, created by the unusual orientation of the dancers' bodies in perpendicular planes, the 1W facing down and her partner facing across the set. She is not looking at him, or she may if she chooses, and while he approaches close to her, that closeness does not change the equation. It's perhaps a plea for closeness, but it segues into not your usual intimate gypsy but rather a Russian gypsy, which is far more ambiguous, including as it does, the powerful imagery of two dancing apart from one, and ending with the very formal lead up in two single steps.
2) Then in the B part, there are expanding circles of inclusion, beginning with a 2-hand turn for the initially distant 1C and then a hands-3 and finally a hands-4.
3) The final stage is the dance around--not an honoring of the neighbor but a "just the two of us in harmony" kind of move, whose intimacy is cemented through eye contact that is, crucially, broken twice during the figure. The final turn single for each W is a reminder of how far the dancing couple has come and perhaps a return to that estranged place for them to begin again.
All of this is achieved through the careful sequencing of expressive orientations of bodies in space and the engaging and breaking of eye contact at key points in the action.
I am immensely grateful to the dancers of the final Lenox Assembly for their beautiful rendering of Fried's choreography in all its rich subtlety and to the members of A Joyful Noise--Daniel Beerbohm, Barbara Greenberg, and Kathy Talvitie--for their sensitive, tender playing.
When Fried presented the dance to me, she included a second, hand-drawn page containing definitions of "Bond" and "Harmony." Among the flowers that adorn that page are anemones. She could not have known at the time that when my father brought flowers to my mother in the hospital when I was born, he brought her anemones. --Paul Ross
What creates the powerful emotional effects of this dance? Surely, it's the music. But also, the three stages of developing intimacy that the dance's figures create with novel uses of eye contact, orientation, and distance:
1) A beginning of emotional distance, created by the unusual orientation of the dancers' bodies in perpendicular planes, the 1W facing down and her partner facing across the set. She is not looking at him, or she may if she chooses, and while he approaches close to her, that closeness does not change the equation. It's perhaps a plea for closeness, but it segues into not your usual intimate gypsy but rather a Russian gypsy, which is far more ambiguous, including as it does, the powerful imagery of two dancing apart from one, and ending with the very formal lead up in two single steps.
2) Then in the B part, there are expanding circles of inclusion, beginning with a 2-hand turn for the initially distant 1C and then a hands-3 and finally a hands-4.
3) The final stage is the dance around--not an honoring of the neighbor but a "just the two of us in harmony" kind of move, whose intimacy is cemented through eye contact that is, crucially, broken twice during the figure. The final turn single for each W is a reminder of how far the dancing couple has come and perhaps a return to that estranged place for them to begin again.
All of this is achieved through the careful sequencing of expressive orientations of bodies in space and the engaging and breaking of eye contact at key points in the action.
I am immensely grateful to the dancers of the final Lenox Assembly for their beautiful rendering of Fried's choreography in all its rich subtlety and to the members of A Joyful Noise--Daniel Beerbohm, Barbara Greenberg, and Kathy Talvitie--for their sensitive, tender playing.
When Fried presented the dance to me, she included a second, hand-drawn page containing definitions of "Bond" and "Harmony." Among the flowers that adorn that page are anemones. She could not have known at the time that when my father brought flowers to my mother in the hospital when I was born, he brought her anemones. --Paul Ross
2 سال پیش
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