Composing Music For Dance
A Michigan composer is commissioned to write a new dance score for a world famous modern dance company.
by Jennifer Guerra
(2006-12-30) The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is considered one of the premiere modern dance companies in the country. Most of their dances are set to spirituals or African-American themed music. But for their latest season which kicked off earlier this month one of the company's choreographers was searching for a different sound. So he commissioned a new dance score from University of Michigan Music & Dance professor Christian Matjias:
"The first thing Uri and I did Uri Sands is the choreographer we talked about what our own influences were musically and choreographically. Told me ideas he had for the work. And they were very loose conversations about imagery and ideas...and with that in mind, the next step I made was to go play company class for the Ailey dancers when they were in Detroit last May.
I have not composed that much music, but when I do compose, I really rely a lot on the person for whom it's intended to get an inspiration. So I went and played company class for their week long residency in Detroit. And then I went into the studio and began recording a number of rough demos of compositions that I had begun working on.
The contradictions that I had to wrestle in creating the piece were drawn from conversations with Uri when he said he wanted music to sound as if it were heard from a great distance away; the way you can look in the sky and see birds flying and you can imagine what that sound is, but you don't actually hear the sound. And so in composing the music title that I gave the work - Na Razia, Bes Schemia "For Now, Without You" is about...I mean it'll be different for each person..but one image that sticks in my mind is what Uri talked about that the immense amount of energy that it takes for a bird to actually suspend itself in the air is quite great. And I suppose that combined with what that phrase means for now without you there's a suspension of time and a great deal of turmoil beneath an apparent cover of calm.
When I visited in August when they were setting the work, I wasn't sure how they reacted to the music. They get to do a couple of new commissions per year and then they have this vast repertory from which they draw the rest of their season. So I wasn't sure how they would take to this music because it is very different from most other things in their repertory. Over the course of the week dancers kept coming to me and telling me how much this music meant to them, that they felt touched one way or the other by the music. To me that was the success. Whether the work is an audience success in any way, obviously I want it to be...but I know that my job was done when the dancers themselves were moved by the work, by the music and the movement."
Christian Matjias' new work will be performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in Toronto in February and in Chicago in March.
