Heaven (2003)

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This week we continue to look at a rich period before and after the turn of the millennium, during which Peggy worked with master choreographers from across Canada and the USA. We’ve arrived at the creation of Heaven for Peggy and pianist Andrew Burashko by award-winning NYC-based choreographer, Doug Varone.

Peggy writes: In 2003 Doug Varone brought together a quartet of dancers for a concert at Jacob’s Pillow titled Short Fictions. Esteemed Limon dancer Nina Watt, Varone Co. veteran Larry Hahn, and I were all in our fifties – with Doug not far behind – all of us baby-boom dance-boomers crossing a fifth decade threshold that had been extraordinarily rare in the previous generation. The program opened with Four Piano Pieces, the first three all Varone masterworks – Nocturn (Chopin), Aperture (Schubert), and Short Story (Rachmaninoff) and it closed with a new work for me with pianist Gabriela Imreh, Heaven, to Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Fugue and Variations.

Heaven is kind of memory play in which the pianist and the dancer each seem to be alone remembering the other. I push against the piano, lean into it and stroke its surfaces. At one point I withdraw the stick holding the piano’s lid open and it slams closed. I sit on the bench back-to-back with the pianist; take their shoulders in my hands and move them; touch their head; lift their hands from keyboard; and even play some of the notes myself. The disruptions to her physical rapport with the piano were, understandably, unsettling to Gabriela, and the tensions provoked became central to the experience of the performance and to the images and associations that arose for the audience.

From the outset, Heaven was intended for my own repertoire, and Doug created it with Andrew Burashko and I.  I remember us working in a New York studio with Andrew playing an upright piano with a table set against the side edge of the keyboard so that I could approximate movements against, along, and over it. Andrew was not thrown off at all by the extent and frequency with which the choreography implicated him. The one exception was when I played notes of the music, and due to his precise ear, my touch and timing required on-going coaching.

This work, with its evocations of absence and longing arising from music, holds in it the essence of my experience now, in hearing the music I once lived in as a dancer. - PB

For Facebook people, watch the performance of Heaven in full here on the Art of Time Ensemble Page.

Doug Varone’s Aperture can be seen on Youtube here and Short Story can be viewed here.

Unfold (2000)

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In 2000, the decade-long collaboration between Peggy Baker and Andrew Burashko sees them tackle a major new work suggested by Andrew: Aleksandr Scriabin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 11. Peggy writes:

“Andrew had been proposing this work for some time, and the gift of commissioning funds from Symphony Space in New York and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa – with performance dates that fell just a month apart – provided the perfect opportunity for us to dedicate ourselves to the development of this demanding work. 

Like Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, (which served as his model), Scriabin composed a short work in each of the major and minor keys of classical western music, and despite this academic premise, his 24 pieces are charged with deep emotion. Some sound as though they are at a loss to complete themselves, while others give the impression that they are about to float apart, combust, collapse inward, or dissolve. A couple of them are as conclusive as a slammed door at the end of a heated argument. Taken as a group they propose what I can only describe as a self-portrait of the composer, and any pianist taking them on must transcend their highly personal specificity and bring a singular interpretation to the score.

I wanted to step up to the score on these same terms, discovering within the style and scope of the music a framework within which to reveal myself with immediacy and authenticity. Ultimately, Unfold offered the audience an intimate experience of Andrew and I as individual artists and as artistic collaborators, but also simply as very different people who have built a deep friendship by bringing our worlds together.

Unfold falls half-way through the 20-year arc of my shared performance life with pianist Andrew Burashko and looking back I see that this was the last of my choreographic works to be created with him; the new dances that followed for he and I were the work of others – Doug Varone, James Kudelka, and Molissa Fenley.” PB

“Baker’s angular, constructivist choreography seems a part of the music, another instrument playing the melancholy themes.  Sometimes she dances in silence… Sometimes Burashko plays alone.  In those passages the ghost of the music and the after-images of Baker’s movement are ever-present.” - Susan Walker, The Toronto Star

If you’re looking for any information on Aleksandr Scriabin, the Scriabin Association has you covered and then some.

furthermore (1999)

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If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll know that by 1999, pianist Andrew Burashko and dancer Peggy Baker had been touring Canada and the USA together for almost a decade. They often included a piano work for Andrew to perform without any dance, and in this week’s blog Peggy recounts how Andrew’s choice of Piano Music No. 2 by John Cage led to the creation of furthermore:

“For this particular composition, Cage had employed the chance procedure of taking flaws in the manuscript paper on which he was notating and assigning them musical notes, some of which would be played on the keyboard, and some by striking or plucking the string directly, reaching inside piano. This piece therefore required that the musician stand at the piano in order to be able to play both the keyboard and the strings simultaneously, while also shifting their weight to extend a leg to work the pedals that sustain or dampen notes. I found the movements required of Andrew quite beautiful, and highly choreographic.

In the fall of 1999 Andrew presented his first recital program for a new music performance initiative under his artistic direction, Art of Time Ensemble. Contemporary music by Americans John Cage, Peter Lieberson, George Crumb, Sebastian Currier ,and George Gershwin was brought together in a program titled Fascinatin’ Rhythms. Along with Andrew, the stellar musicians on the program included Steve Dann (viola), Beverley Johnston (percussion), Barbara Hannigan (soprano), and Joel Quarrington (double bass). I danced to Cage’s Piano Music No. 2, and my choreography was an elaboration on Andrew’s actions so that the work became both a piano solo and a movement duet. I titled the premiere and, moreover, and later renamed it furthermore, though I can no longer imagine why I thought it needed to be changed…” PB

To read more about how John Cage redefined music, visit NPR here.

Art of Time Ensemble has become a live performance juggernaut in Toronto. Andrew’s company presents an annual season of concerts that fuse high art with popular culture. To listen to a selection of their recordings visit Soundcloud here, or their YouTube channel.

Encoded Revision (1997)

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By 1996 Peggy and pianist Andrew Burashko had a repertoire that included 19th century western music by Brahms, Chopin and Liszt, early 20th century music by Tcherepnin, mid century compositions by Prokofiev and Cage, and one late 20th century new music work by American composer Peter Garland. What would be their next focus? Peggy fills us in:

“When I opened a conversation on commissioning a new work, Andrew immediately suggested Michael J. Baker who was extremely active in the Toronto music scene as a composer, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist and had been composing for dance since the early 1970s. We quickly agreed on Michael (whose last name I share because we had been married for 12 years of our young adult lives) and were ecstatic when my newly incorporated company, now called Peggy Baker Dance Projects, secured our first ever grant to commission the music.

The score for Encoded Revision requires a performance of post-modern virtuosity by the pianist who is constantly shifting metre and tempo, has text to deliver throughout and is also called upon to manipulate the score pages as props within the choreography. I loved performing this dance, but the choreography did not meet its potential until it was revived with Benjamin Kamino 16 years after its premiere.

The program notes give a full overview of the form and content of the piece:

The creation of this work was based on the literary form of the palimpsest: a document written upon several times, with remnants of earlier, imperfectly erased writing still visible. A palimpsest simultaneously documents and destroys its own history, encoding the original text within a revision.

Buried inside of Encoded Revision, and serving as the original document for the musical palimpsest, is a newspaper account of the tragic death of the composer’s great grandfather in a train accident on the Canadian prairies in 1898. Three generations later the story existed only vaguely in the family’s oral history until it was recovered more completely through the composer’s research. In every available account – newspapers, CPR telegrams, and North West Mounted Police reports – this intriguing bit of information surfaces: “A tramp, who was stealing a ride, was slightly injured, and started walking east after he had his breakfast.” I dance the role of the tramp in Michael’s story.” PB

“Encoded Revision…dates back to 1997, and the intervening 16 years has not dimmed its raucous swagger. … Everything about this solo works. The high octane energy of the dance itself. The sporadic bits of text shouted by Kamino and Farah. The visuals of the flying music paper. It is an utterly engaging romp…” - Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail

To learn more about palimpsests, watch Contemporary Art Theme on YouTube.

Notes on a Collaboration

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For this week’s blog, Peggy’s collaborator for twenty years, pianist Andrew Burashko looks back at their prolific partnership:

When I first met Peggy in January of 1991, I was at the threshold of a career as a concert pianist - a career I only ever imagined as a soloist, sometimes sharing the stage with other musicians - a solitary pursuit with not much room for anything else. I knew nothing of modern dance or any other kind of dance for that matter; and I only knew of Peggy Baker as the ex-wife of the composer Michael J. Baker with whom I had worked.

Peggy had just returned to Canada after a decade in New York and was looking for a pianist to perform a work that Mark Morris had given her as a gift when she left White Oak Dance Project. It was a work titled Ten Suggestions which was choreographed for solo dancer to Ten Bagatelles for solo piano by Alexander Tcherpnin. When Peggy first reached out to me, I saw it as a gig that would earn me some sustenance between ‘real’ engagements - solo recitals and concerto appearances. It seemed like a compromise - a job for a pianist incapable of commanding the stage on their own. This was my fragile, young ego talking, of course.

I remember showing up at the first rehearsal with a metronome to capture the exact tempi Peggy wanted, imagining that I would need to follow her. It was a relief to learn that she wanted me to play the music as I felt it. That was the beginning. For the next twenty years of our collaboration she encouraged me to choose the music – pieces I yearned to play – and allowed for my interpretations to inform her choreography. It was a revelation to see the music I was playing manifested in her movement. Not only in terms of her expression but also as a counterpoint. When making music with other musicians, everyone must be on the same page emotionally and intellectually. It’s not possible for one musician to be still or serene while a musical storm is raging around them. It was a shock to see her choreography seemingly contradict instead of mirror my idea of what the music was saying. It brought another level of nuance to my understanding of music.

Peggy also revealed an entirely new world to me by exposing me to the remarkable discipline and beauty of dance; and by helping me discover a new paradigm for myself as a classical musician. She brought me out of the spartan environment of the concert hall and into the magical and mysterious world of the theatre – lighting, staging, the possibilities of creating another world for the music – things I had never considered before and that I embraced and incorporated into Art of Time concerts.

The lessons were plenty and the growth profound. In short, I wouldn’t have found the path I am on today without having met Peggy.

Thank you dear friend. AB