Dreaming Awake (2008)

/

In this week’s post, we look back at the third collaborative project with NY-based dancer and choreographer, Molissa Fenley.

Peggy writes: I was extremely excited to be working with Molissa Fenley again when we set out on the development of Dreaming Awake with a premiere expected early in 2007. I had always taken a huge amount of pleasure in the circuitous choreographic pathways of her dances and the ways in which she connects with musical landmarks, with the dancer navigating the architecture of the sound rather than the phrasing of beats. Dance adrift on an ocean of music.

For Dreaming Awake Molissa had chosen a piano work of the same name by Phillip Glass and used the music – which cycles in repeating loops – twice in a row. It was an interesting coincidence because I had chosen to do the very same thing the previous year with Karen Tanaka’s score for Krishna’s Mouth and I fully appreciated Mo’s desire to double it up.

Choreographically, Molissa set out a series of complicated phrases in what proved to be a first iteration, because before long the phrases were fragmented and rearranged many times over, sometimes doubling back to places on the stage and within the choreographic language that were maddeningly familiar. It felt something like being inside of an architectural construct by Escher and it was quite disorienting. In an early studio showing I became hopelessly lost when I discovered myself at the same intersection in the dance several times in a row, an experience I found completely unnerving.

While I was rehearsing Dreaming Awake I developed chronic pain in the third metatarsal of my right foot. It eventually proved to be a stress fracture, and I learned that it wasn’t going to get better unless I could stop altogether for many weeks. On the other hand, it had been hurting me for months without interfering with what I needed to accomplish, so I decided to go ahead with my planned 5-city tour (titled “3”) thinking that once it was finished I would take time off. Then, just days before leaving for Montreal, doing a simple transfer of weight to my right foot – (you’ve probably seen this coming) – I felt the bone snap and there was no longer any question about when I would stop so that the healing could begin.

Embarking on tour a year later, my foot was up to the physical challenge, but the complexities of finding my way through the labyrinth of steps in this gorgeous dance continued to threaten me with catastrophe. I finally premiered Dreaming Awake in Calgary, but that foot injury marked the beginning of slow shift in my thinking and eventually in my dance practice, one that led me to the role of choreographer of ensemble works.

Unfold (2000)

/

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.

Inner Enchantments (1991)

/

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.

White Oak and the Great White North - 1990

/

This week we take a brief break from looking back at the repertoire, and focus on Peggy’s decision to return to Canada from New York in 1990 - a pivotal career move that would present her with the opportunity to create her own company and artistic home for the next thirty plus years:

“I danced with the Lar Lubovitch Company for eight magnificent years. That experience delivered me into the deep physical poetry of Lar’s choreographic vision; into the thrilling raucous and thrum of life as a dancer in 1980s New York; out into the wide world on stages across the globe; and into the heart of myself as an artist. But as sometimes happens with a dancer and a choreographer, I eventually found myself out of sync with the evolving form and content of Lar’s work, and in the summer of 1988, I left the company to make the time and space to consider other possibilities for myself.

Over the next year I gave more of my time to teaching, looking for the voice and values that would emerge outside the framework of the company. I considered pursuing an apprenticeship with my teacher Jean-Claude West, but got side-tracked when I agreed to undertake a self-produced concert at Danspace Project, St Mark’s with two colleagues. When one of the dancers took another opportunity it was suddenly a concert of solos and duets. Now in my late thirties, I imagined that I might only dance for a few more years, so I began seeking out choreographers whose work I loved to make solos for me – Christopher House, Doug Varone, Annabelle Gamson, Molissa Fenley, Tere O’Connor.

And then, my relationship of six years suddenly collapsed. I needed to find a new place to live, but I was traveling so much to teach - and I was at such loose ends as a dancer - that I thought “where would I live if I wasn’t living here?” Vancouver? Too far away. Toronto? Going back and not forward. Montreal? Yes! It is a fantastic scene! I will learn to speak French! One of my closest friends lives there, and bang! he invites me to be his roommate! So I complete the Danspace concert with Janie Brendel, and I arrive at the home of James Kudelka in Montreal as the city is reeling and deep in mourning in the aftermath of the massacre at l’Ecole Polytechnique.

By January 1990, Tedd Robinson had programmed me for his Winnipeg dance festival in May, and James had introduced me to Marc Parent, a young lighting wizard who would be my lighting designer/technical director/stage manager for that first concert in Winnipeg. I arranged to revive Paul-André Fortier’s masterwork Non Coupable, learning the dance from Susan Macpherson who originated the solo.

Out of the blue I got a phone call from Barry Alterman, then the manager of Mark Morris Dance Group, to say that Mark was starting a new company with Misha (aka Mikhail Baryshnikov) called the White Oak Dance Project and would I join? So with my things from New York still in a storage unit in Montreal, and with the contents of one suitcase in the bureau of my bedroom at James’ apartment in the old city, I repacked my second suitcase and began shuttling between: Montreal; Winnipeg (where I debuted as a soloist and, oh yes, fell in love with someone who lived in Toronto); Jacksonville, Florida (the closest airport to the rehearsal location for the White Oak Dance Project) and New York (the second White Oak location); Durham, North Carolina (for a teaching gig at American Dance Festival); Toronto (because now I had Ahmed Hassan to visit!); and touring destinations across the US with White Oak.

After that rollicking ride with White Oak in 1990, I realized that what I wanted to do most was follow Misha’s example and be a dancer in charge of my own creative life. And so in December of that year, I found myself in Toronto, going forward and not backward. No master plan about a solo career; just a tremendous appetite to explore the solo form and to find out what would happen if I stepped into a studio alone and no one told me what to do.” - PB

For a window into the contemporary Euro-American dance scene in 1980s New York City watch Making Dances here.
For an expansive article on Mikhail Baryshnikov from 1998, read The Soloist in The New Yorker here.