On the afternoon of Saturday, June 21, student dancers and musicians from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee came to The Linde Center for Music and Learning at The Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) and performed in Studio E. And on that Saturday, I was reminded in the best possible way that this giant of Berkshire performing arts institutions, Tanglewood, is so much more than just this country’s premier summer music venue; it is also a world-renowned educational center and school for musicians, composers and performing artists, including, as it turns out, dancers.
Studio E at The Linde Center is both an interesting and spectacular performance space for dance. Its design would suggest a black box theater; it is anything but, however. It is airy, open and bright, with floor to ceiling glass unfolding to beautiful red oak trees as the natural backdrop. It is a fascinating place to watch dance and to listen to music.
The concert opened with two solo music pieces: “Memory,” for violin, composed by Chen Yi, and J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite in C, BWV1009. It was obvious, even to this untrained ear, that the performers, the violinist, Kristen Barrett, and the cellist, Madeleine Corrigan, as well as all the musicians in the concert, were in the process of leaving the moniker of “student” behind. They were accomplished musicians well on their way to being professional, if they were not there already. The two solo players started on stage as part of the orchestra. Each came forward onto the center of the dance floor, performed their pieces, and then returned to the orchestra to be part of the ensemble for the dance work. It was informal and formal at the same time.
The musical pieces were followed by “Onward Still,” a work for ten dancers choreographed by Ken Ossola, to original music by Polle van Genechten, with lyrics by Martino Müller. Ossola has been connected to Nederlands Dance Theater, an internationally known contemporary ballet company centered in The Hague, Netherlands, for many years, as both a dancer and choreographer. Among Ossola’s program notes for “Onward Still” is the sentence “A fleeting breath where time dissolves, past and future entwined in now.” As the piece began, with no recognizable time signature, despite the fact that the music featured percussion, and with the dancers and musicians moving to their own cadence, one got the meaning of that sentence. I was just settling into the piece’s internal rhythms and visual sensibility when the music moved to a recognizable tempo. Initially, I almost felt disappointment, as I wanted to continue to enjoy the intangible pulse I was feeling in the work to that point. That disappointment quickly melted away, though, as the dancers began really cooking to the rhythms, and the piece started to build.
The piece worked on many levels, not the least of which was its pedagogy for the students. It demanded not only clean dance technique, but strong unison work (requiring continuous onstage connection between all the dancers) and intricate patterning and spacing. But it was not overbearing. Repeated performances will make the dancers ever stronger, in many subtle—but critical—ways. Tamia Jaune knew when to attack the choreography, and when to let it wash over her. Derek Lee was light on his feet. And this viewer was drawn to Sayler Nguyen not only because of her dancing, but because she had an open, almost surprised look on her face much of the time while she danced, and it drew me in. One comment I could offer these dancers generally is to keep working on their performance faces. (It is a good day for dancers when the comments made about their performances in a non-narrative, ensemble piece are fussy, nit-picking ones about their facial expressions, because it means everything else about their performance was excellent! As with the musicians, these are dancers well on their way to being professional.)
The music for the dance, “One Stream,” by van Genechten, was exquisite. Everyone involved in bringing this together musically, the strings and vocal arranger Patrice Jackson, the conductor, Matthew Marsit, the musicians and singers, and especially percussionists Jin Cho and Yuth Cañizalez, deserve very high praise. It is hard to believe the vast majority of those involved were students. The sound, as the piece built and developed, was gorgeous, and approached dazzling when the three voices were added. How these dancers were able to connect to the music and the musicians, and vice versa, was nothing short of amazing, especially given what I assume was a short amount of live rehearsal time. Kudos to Boston Conservatory associate professor of dance and rehearsal director John Lam. And again, precious and priceless learning experiences for these young dancers and musicians.
Tanglewood Learning Institute Production Manager Mark Rulison notes that this is the first time the Boston Conservatory at Berklee has worked directly with Tanglewood and the Learning Institute. The plan is for this to be the beginning of a long and fruitful affiliation. If this first collaboration is any indication, the association between the two will be a smashing success.
Tanglewood is a vast and complex place, featuring giant performances by world famous orchestras and conductors, not to mention the likes of James Taylor. But within that labyrinth, and sprinkled throughout the summer, there will undoubtedly be littler performance gems like the one I saw on June 21. In addition to going to the celebrated, huge performances, I urge you to seek out those smaller performance gems, and go!
