Julia Adam very much enjoys the choreographic process, finding
it a good balance to the different demands of being a dancer.
As a dancer she felt it took years to truly find herself as she
was always prejudging what she was doing. Choreographing she
feels much freer to go with her impulses and will edit afterwards.
Julia finds the work intellectually stimulating. She says "I
enjoy painting the stage with my impressions of the music. I
am very moved by things visually; it is exciting to sculpt a
space."
Julia has found success in many different choreographic styles
and generally she says the music comes first. For BalletMet she
had earmarked a piece by Schubert, but the more she listened
to it the less it seemed to inspire her. She then turned to the
music of Astor Piazzolla. Having seen the dancers of BalletMet
she found they inspired her greatly and provided her with very
clear images. Ms. Adam decided to commission a score from composer
Matthew Pierce and used the essence of the dancers to describe
the music she needed.
Julia had danced with Matthew Pierce’s brother in a duet
choreographed by Christopher Stowell to Matthew’s music.
After being at BalletMet she attended a performance of Mark Morris’
company at Ann Arbor where Mr. Pierce was playing. Following
the show they went out for a drink and the commission was placed.
Before the score was delivered Ms. Adam read the poem The
Angel, of William Blake (1757 - 1827). This poem has also
been integrated into her points of reference for this ballet.
The Angel.
I dreamt a Dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen,
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe, was ne’er beguil’d!
And I wept both night and day,
And he wip’d my tears away,
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart’s delight.
So he took his wings and fled;
Then the morn blush’d rosy red;
I dried my tears and arm’d my fears,
With ten thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again:
I was arm’d, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And gray hairs were on my head.
Finding existing music, suitable for a dance, that is not
already overused and cliché is a challenge. It is not
every composer who is interested in creating works for dance.
Ms. Adam says "It is so alive to have that score written"
and considers herself very lucky to have received such wonderful
music.
Julia likes to prepare well ahead of entering the studio.
She will study the music and break it down into sections planning
who will dance when and where the focus of the music will be.
Although she prepares some movements ahead of time, mostly images
that are formed by the music, much of her work evolves in the
studio. For many of her works she begins with a vocabulary of
movement and then manipulates it in various ways through the
course of the dance. She says that she likes this when she watches
someone else’s work as she feels it helps the viewer understand
more. This is how she worked with Innocence and Experience.
Musicality of dancers is very important to Julia. It is not
just broad rhythms that she works with but the subtlety and the
punctuation of the musical phrases. Although demanding on details
she wants to see, Julia finds it very interesting to see how
different dancers will perform the same moves in different ways.
She is open to seeing the dance take a life of its own in the
interpretation of individual dancers, but it is also important
to Julia to have the correct casting so that the individual personalities
of the dancers match her ideals for those roles.
Having completed the choreography for Innocence and Experience
Julia finds another poem of William Blake to be a good summation
of her ballet.
Ah! Sun-flower
Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime,
Where the traveler’s journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
Asked about influences on her career as dancer and choreographer,
Julia responds that she has had the fortune to work with many
of the greats of dance and they have all left their mark on her
in some way or another. Most notably she admires Mark Morris
whom she considers a master of structure, clarity and musicality,
William Forsythe for his movement and Jiri Kylian for the way
he can touch your heart. She also counts the influence of European
cinema and its use of light and color.
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The Music, Transfigured Day
It was while creating his new opera The Elektra Fugues
and following a performance that Matthew was playing for Mark
Morris that Julia Adam approached him to create the score for
her new ballet. Although there was not a formulated libretto
in place on which to base the score, they discussed the project
and decided to create a spirit of introspection in the music.
He said that Julia was looking inward at that time and talked
of the idea of there being some kind of conflict of two ideas,
entering into which is an angelic presence. There would not be
a great sense of joy or happiness in the piece but more a feeling
of self discovery, a minor revelation that does not stop you
from returning to your own life. This return, however, would
not be uncolored by the event.
Choosing to work with a string quartet, an area in which he
is familiar (being a violinist), Matthew says he began with a
post-minimalist, almost jazz influenced style. Having established
ostinatos as a base, Matthew used improvisation - that he then
wrote out - to complete the score. Often times, he says, "the
improvisation comes from nowhere - you just get an idea and go
with it, having to trust your instincts." Matthew viewed
the whole project as a great exploration. He has not done a great
deal of detailed reworking of the music; although it may not
be perfect, he believes there is enough there to say something.
There was also a very short time in which to compose, record
and send the music to Julia Adam so that she could begin her
creative process before Christmas 1996.
It is not as easy to build a volume of sound and emotional
intensity with a quartet as with a string orchestra. In the future,
Matthew would like to expand the piece to be played by a string
orchestra so that the spirit could be more fully expressed.
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Matthew Pierce, composer
Matthew Pierce is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory from
which he holds a Master’s Degree. He has spent 22 years
training as a violinist.
Matthew’s transition into composition is recent and is
a result of his desire to articulate his musical voice. Feeling
stifled by the preconception that a (classical) musical lineage
is descended from someone else, (for some Beethoven; for Matthew,
Paganini), Matthew became interested in incorporating all different
types of the music by which he was surrounded: pop, rock, jazz,
Balinese, Chinese, folk, symphonic and opera. He began working
with a classically-trained yet jazz-influenced musician. They
collaborated on a number of works for violin and guitar as The
Unsung String Duo. Here, Matthew worked improvisationally
and composed his first works. On his own, he composed his Seed
Music concerto for violin.
In November 1995, for Tim Maner’s Seven, Matthew
wrote incidental music for violin and cello and composed his
first choral work for six women’s voices and strings to
words of Ruth Margraff. In the spring of 1996, Matthew scored
Kristin Marting’s The Courtesan (a two hour score
with incidental music and six songs for voice, chorus and strings
with words again by Margraff). In the fall of 1996, again with
Maner and Margraff, Matthew wrote an opera called The Elektra
Fugues, winning a Meet the Composer grant and a review
from the Village Voice calling the music "haunting and universal."
Most recently, he wrote a short ballet for string quartet
with choreography by Christopher Stowell called Prayer.
Matthew is seeking to establish a new consciousness of original
and fresh music while incorporating all the techniques he has
learned from master composers he loves and appreciates.
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