Assara (1995)

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This week, Peggy looks back at a work choreographed for her by one of the founders of Toronto Dance Theatre, Patricia Beatty.

“Though she died in 2020, Trish will always remain a towering figure in my life. I met her in 1968 at a summer theatre school where she was teaching a daily movement class. The wisdom, sensuality and riveting immediacy of Trish’s dancing knocked me completely over. She inhabited her female body with grace and gravity. She spoke in the language of poetry - grand metaphors, invocations of the natural world, frank references to the body as the locus of desire, pleasure, intuition and creation. Up until that point I had aspired to become an actor, but from the day that I met her I understood that I had found my life’s work.

When I moved to Toronto in the fall of 1971 it was expressly to study with the company Trish co-directed, Toronto Dance Theatre. She always took my aspirations in dance absolutely to heart. Her guidance was honest and nuanced and she demonstrated through her dedication to the technique of Martha Graham that the physical practice of a dancer is an act of devotion. When, eventually, she was no longer capable of the rigours of Graham floorwork, she grieved the loss deeply. It was at this tremendously challenging time in her life that Trish suggested we once again intensify our relationship through the creation of a solo.

Trish’s highly specific and unique physicality permeated each of her dances, and it was an extraordinary experience to feel her impulses alive within my own body as I her danced her work. She was always extremely articulate about her choreographic intentions, so I’ll share her program note so that you can hear her speaking about this dance in her own voice” - PB

“Assara is a revered name from the ancient scripts of the pre-Hellenic islands of Crete and Cyprus. The word means pillar and it was used in these sophisticated civilizations to invoke the power of the Goddess. I have used it as a title for this dance about the renewal of true justice because we understand the symbol of a pillar of wisdom and a pillar of strength. The wise woman, once the central inhabitant of the female figure of justice, has been sadly and dangerously lost in our time. Where we look for fairness and compassion, we now see revenge and argumentativeness. This dance is a call for the renewal of true fairness and compassion in our thinking and practice of justice – it is also a call for the return of the wise woman into our lives and communities.” - Trish Beatty

To read more about the early years of TDT under the triumvirate leadership of Patricia Beatty, David Earle, and Peter Randazzo visit Dance Collection Danse here.

Brahms Waltzes (1992)

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This week we arrive in 1992 and look at Peggy’s third major solo created on and for herself, the timeless Brahms Waltzes:

“An invitation to bring a solo program to Peterborough through Public Energy Performing Arts came with some commissioning money for a new work, so Brahms Waltzes marks the very first work of mine to garner to an investment in my choreographic development by a presenter – trailblazing contemporary dance champion, Bill Kimball.

Although having a pianist perform with me for the premiere far exceeded the scope of the budget for this run with Bill, the choice of an early work for piano by Johannes Brahms was certainly inspired by the possibility of having Andrew Burashko perform with me at some point in the future.

Annabelle Gamson had taught me Isadora Duncan’s dances to the same series of waltzes, and I curious to see how I might respond to the music myself. As I developed the choreography I could feel myself weighing the many influences on my dancing and asking myself what to let of go, what to go beyond, what to get deeper inside. I think I kept coming back to this dance as a kind of touchstone because it holds that time of transition so transparently.

Brahms Waltzes rides the uncomplicated joys of the music, but it also holds two central metaphors: sleep as an integrating force during a time of personal change and growth, and the demarcation of a new period in one’s life as the crossing of a threshold.” PB

"Mixes graceful lyricism with an economy of gesture and even moments of complete stillness in a solo that spans explosions of power with almost meditative serenity.” - Michael Crabb, The Toronto Star

Peggy gifted this work to Kate Holden and Jessica Runge as part of Year One of her Choreographer’s Trust project. Find out more about The Choreographer’s Trust here, and read about Kate’s reinterpretation of this piece as this body of memory / Brahms Waltzes in The Toronto Star here.

To read more about sleep as a metaphor in art and dance, read this article in The Huffington Post.

Ten Suggestions (1981/1991)

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This week Peggy writes about Ten Suggestions, choreographed by Mark Morris.

“With The White Oak Dance Project, I had the extraordinary experience of dancing Ten Suggestions, a solo that choreographer Mark Morris had made for himself ten years earlier, in 1981. I had been in the audience when Mark premiered the solo at DTW (Dance Theatre Workshop, now New York Live Arts), and had been so thrilled by his performance that I went home and wrote a poem in an attempt to capture what it had felt like to witness him.

For White Oak, Mark had double cast me with one of the greatest dancers of all time, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and to be in the studio with the two of them together was as exhilarating as it was intimidating.

I gave my very first performance on a night that Misha had been scheduled to perform and when the stage manager announced the change of casting, I stood on stage behind the curtain ready to begin and heard the entire audience groan in unison. Not that I blamed them, because they had come expressly to see Baryshnikov (who did perform in every other work on the program), but oh, what a way to make a debut in a role!

When I made the decision to strike out on my own rather than continue with White Oak, Mark immediately offered Ten Suggestions to me as a gift. Can you imagine?! He gave me a dance! And in receiving that gift, the course of my creative life changed in profound ways. Mark’s work is always danced to live music, and in seeking out a pianist as my performance partner I found Andrew Burashko, who became my most constant and influential collaborator and performance partner for the next 20 years.” PB

"Ten Suggestions opens with Baker, dressed in silky pink pajamas, crouching and tumbling onto a stage otherwise occupied by a cane-backed chair, a hula hoop and a hat. The first part is all long, loose limbs, beautifully articulated by Baker...she goes on to conquer successively the various props and finally is herself whipped around by the music, as though she's become its prop. The movement is rich, almost baroque, in a thoroughly modern way, with its pure design and intricate detailing."   Alina Gildner, The Globe and Mail

To read more about Mikhail Barynikov’s defection from the USSR in Toronto in 1974 visit the CBC here.

Ten Suggestions

Peggy Baker (2009)

 

In 1990 I was invited to join Mark Morris and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project for its inaugural season. Among the many extraordinary gifts of that time for me was sharing a part with Baryshnikov in a charming solo called Ten Suggestions. Mark had made Ten Suggestions for himself in 1981 and I had seen the first performance at the old Dance Theatre Workshop in New York. I went home from that concert and wrote a poem that captures the touching, virtuosic, campy essence of the performance:

                        The man in the pink silk pajamas was spectacular;

                        Casals playing in the light of Liberace’s candelabra.

                        I saw Nijinsky dance in 1981.

Mark is a great big guy, soft and floppy and flamboyant. He tosses off impressive turns and balances with the greatest of ease and he is supremely musical. Misha is like a greyhound, small and perfectly proportioned. He is lean and muscular, and there is nothing he can’t do well. One of the greatest classical dancers of all time, he is handsome and sexy to boot. I am a tallish, angular modern dancer, somewhat androgynous. My proportions are odd, but somehow everything balances out. Depending on the dance, I tend toward extremes of either cool abstraction or deep emotion.

It was an unusual choice for Mark to cast both Misha and me in a solo he had made for himself. With no basis for comparison, because of the drastic contrasts among us, I realized that I had been in the habit of comparing myself to other dancers rather than thinking of myself purely in relation to the choreography.

Picture this: for the very first step of the dance you wait several bars, then suddenly appear from the up right wing, pull off as many pirouettes as you can in a couple of counts and then drop to a crouch. Any choreographer would dream of having Mikhail Baryshnikov for a moment like that. But whatever Misha did, I was going to have to treat it differently, because I’ve never gotten around more than three times in my entire career. The immediate and enduring lesson on that one was to focus on the dance and to consider and explore ways in which to meet the challenges of the choreography, rather than lamenting my inability to choose options that are only available to others.

I also got a better sense of the fact that sometimes it is simply the physique of a dancer that makes something work in a particular way. Mark’s lush bulk was splendid for the Duncanesque dance with a ribbon. Misha was so low and compact for the somersault / crouch phrase that it read like the kind of optical illusion a clown uses to squash his height. And my extra long arms were the perfect length for the deco sequence with the hoop. You can’t compete with that kind of thing, you can only think of it as a gift in terms of the dance.

Mark was incredibly generous in the way that he rehearsed Misha and me, taking tremendous pleasure in seeing the dance reinvented by each of us. One of my strongest memories from those rehearsals is of Mark, head thrown back, laughing his wild cackle over the delightful beauty, or crazy out-of-character look of some moment. Misha loved to talk things over with me. How did I approach this or that, what did I think of the way he had chosen to do something.  Was I aware of having lost some detail or of having changed something he thought worked well. That same openness and curiosity was sustained through the performances as we supported each other with a comment or question and continued to observe each other’s work with interest and appreciation.

Non Coupable (1982/1990)

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Peggy’s connections with Paul-André Fortier, the ground-breaking choreographer from Montreal, are many but they begin with the acquisition of his solo Non Coupable early in her company’s history. Paul-André writes:

“This solo first premiered in 1982, masterfully performed by Susan Macpherson. The piece was later performed by three other remarkable dancers: Michèle Febvre, Manon Levac and Peggy Baker. Each drew upon their background, experience and physique to plumb the depths of this work in a unique way. Peggy embraced this solo body and soul, crafting the darkest, most nuanced portrayal of a woman caught between her fears and her desires.” PAF

Peggy adds: “I learned Non Coupable from my friend and teacher Susan Macpherson before being coached by Paul-André, and from the first moment he and I were alone in the studio together, a particular mix of responses arose in me that have held true over the years since: awe and some intimidation in the presence of a great and uncompromising artist; intense attraction to Paul-André as an extremely intelligent, funny, physically charged, and outspoken person; fascination and respect for his provocative work; and a direct confrontation with my vulnerabilities and limitations as a dancer.

I performed Non Coupable for the first time as part of my solo debut in Winnipeg in 1990, and I continued to come back to it for another 17 years. The shock and charge of the actions, acts, and images that drive the choreography remain as vivid sensory memories for me: the rumble, scraping strum, and metallic hammer strikes of the prepared piano in Henry Kucharzyk’s searing score; the tight wrap of the costume against every contour of my body, and the binding of the rope on my arms; my vision distorted by the mask; the tremendous weight of the stones, and baring my breast to suckle one; sitting over my heels, knees open, the crack and thud of one stone slamming the other against my crotch. It is an intense piece for both the viewer and performer, but one that stands out for me as an incredible work of art.” PB

Tying together the Creation Catalogue blog posts since late May is the brief critique of Peggy’s 1991 solo show for NYC’s Danspace Project by James Sewell in Ballet Review. Covering Non Coupable, Sanctum, This Isn’t the End, Inner Enchantments and The Volpe Sisters, this review has provided the Peggy Baker Dance Projects’ management team over the years with one of the best pull quotes an arts manager could dream of: “There are good dancers. There are great dancers. And then there is Peggy Baker… From the essence of gesture to the unrestrained explosion in space, Baker moves with eloquence and force. It’s like seeing the human body for the first time.”

The first - and iconic - photo below, taken by Cylla von Tiedemann, supports Mr. Sewell’s thoughts.

From more information on the reviewer, visit James Sewell Ballet here.

Inner Enchantments (1991)

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This week we arrive in 1991, and look at the first of three solos that Peggy commissioned from dancer and choreographer, Molissa Fenley.

“Like all of the solos I commissioned from her, Molissa Fenley’s Inner Enchantments is a dance she made with the intention that both she and I would have it in our repertoires. Mo stayed at least one rehearsal ahead choreographically so she could work at her own pace and then teach me the material she had formalized, always dancing with me. I loved that, because her impulses were very different from mine and emulating her gave me a way of getting closer to her style.

Inner Enchantments is danced to Music in Twelve Parts: Part 1 by Philip Glass and it uses landmarks in the music as entry or completion points for choreographic sequences that unfurl over a minute or longer. The movement phrasing remains open, so as Mo and I danced together we would fall in and out of sync.

When I arrived at rehearsal the first day after she had completed the dance, Mo told me in a kind of off-hand way that Phil was coming to watch me do a run-through. I immediately began to panic. I barely knew the choreography and the thought of dancing alone for Philip Glass - to his music! - was terrifying, so Molissa agreed to dance with me. It was still terrifying, but also sensational! Phil loved seeing us dance together, our offset timing, the concentric circles of our floor patterns, the contrast in our physiques and physicalities. His response inspired me to invite Molissa to dance the premiere in Toronto as a duet, and upon seeing that duet, Cathy Levy invited us to dance together at the Canada Dance Festival. From that point on, Molissa and I each performed Inner Enchantments as a solo, though in my own performances the choreographer and the composer never failed to be present as a kind of afterglow.” - PB

Of this first commissioned solo, Molissa writes “Inner Enchantments is composed of two distinct movement/spatial phrasings: phrases that take place close in and around the body (an inner world) and expansive phrases that take place along the wide perimeter of the circle enclosing that inner space. The phrases are of pure movement and yet danced by Peggy with her very exact physical execution merged with her emotionality and spirit of generosity, a dance of possible mystery and magic is created. She immerses herself in the underlying internal and expresses to us that appearance in a joyful realization.”

Find out more about Molissa Fenley’s childhood and career in Dance Icons here.
Read more about Philip Glass’ bond with dance in Dance Magazine here.