FIRST STEPS IN AN OLD ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 437, 7 November 1947, Page 6

FIRST STEPS IN AN OLD ART

| Written for "The Listener" by |

BRUCE

MASON

AST month the New Dance Group presented. its third annual programme in Wellington. Who are these people? And what have they been doing for three years? These questions may have been asked before this, but for some reason, no attempt has yet been made to answer them. This is such an attempt, first, because in three years certain interesting things may emerge, and secondly, because the director of the group, Philip Smithells, is soon to go south to a university appointment, and it seems unlikely that the

New Dance Group will be working again in quite its present form. In the note to the first programme presented in 1945, these words appeared -which can stand as a statement of intent for the group: A group of us have been experimenting for six months or so on sofhe unconventional dance themes. Most of the group have had some dance experience, but no two have had the same background. We were anxious to avoid the well-trodden and too worn paths of ballet, operatic, or acrobatic dance, end the type of interpretative dance that reeks with sentimentality. No one of us was an expert-but with the aid of a non-dancing chairman, we evolved more or less democratically the theme to be shown in this demonstration. The 1945 programme was in two parts, the first an insight into the workshop of the dance, its training and techniques, the ‘second the dance itself, built on these techniques. For, eas the programme _ pointed out, @ dancer cannot be plastic and adaptable without certain basic disciplines and knowledge, and the first part showed how these disciplines were undertaken. We saw arm movements, falls, progressive waltz movements, rhythmic patterns, and movements derived from daily actions. We saw how differently a@ dance might be discovered; through submission to the structure of music, or to its quality, or through a dramatic idea, for which music had to be found or devised. We saw how a simple movement focussed in a certain way

could ‘become suddenly rich and precise, how a fall or a leap properly made could be both dramatic and exhilarat-, ing. The second half of the programme was from an Unfinished Major Work’"’-some of the images which might fill the mind of-a4 man imprisoned. The most effective of these was "Monotony" which was performed twice, as the leit motif to all prison life. It was very simple, I remember; a line of dancers slow-stepping, quickening as the music quickened, the nervous rhythmic walking of the utterly bored, then slower again until the line

is at rest, kneeling, head down, facing the audience. The heads raise, stiffly, jerkily, one after the other, and a spotlight flashes briefly on each blank face. If the other dances were not as direct and strik-; ing as this, they were no less suggestive. I think most of us that night felt we were seeing for the first time ' glimpses of an instrument subtle and flexible, promising a richness greater in some ways than the arts of drama, music and design could give alone. The next year I joined the group, which so far had worked only with women,

‘THE programme presented in 1946 showed a considerable technical advance, though it did not develop in quite the way one might have expected. Where the first programme had been tentative, this was now far more formal, and where then the emphasis had been rather more on rhythmic patterns of movement, the new programme was dominantly musical. This year we were able to present a "Major Work" lasting 25 minutes, which we worked at for four months. A woman is shocked into feeling by the impact of war, . and develops a more resilient self to combat these influences. The war goes on, and others make demands on her, asks that she work for the war, insists that she be faithful to the man away fighting, denounces her for succumbing to the man who has come to the land to use it as a base. Gradually, the new hardness in her assumes a life of its own, subduing and finally triumphing over the other more sensitive side of her nature. The woman was represented by two soloists who used the main body of the stage for their narrative; on a platform set well back, Society was danced by a chorus, acting sometimes as commentator, at others a participator in the action. There was some fine mass movement and grouping here, often in a limited area, and it was most pleasant to dance. Some liked it, others found it difficult to follow the two lines of action at once, some felt the theme was obscure, and others said it was sloppy. This may have been because we found, when we set to work on Brahms’ first piano concerto, that his

musical themes were worked out at a different pace from our dramatic theme -sometimes the music was too fast for us, and we had to telescope our idea, hence the obscurities; or if it was too slow we had to fill in until it seemed to work our way again, and hence here, the sloppiness. Perhaps the most successful dance of the 1946 programme was "Spiritual and Blues," to music by a modern French composer, Alexandre Tansmdn. The music evokes in ‘the simplest. way two moods characteristic of the Negro-the hymn-like dolour and submission of the spiritual, and the rhythmic melanchely ‘of the blues. The dance was é€xXacily parallel, a perfect translation of the musical mood into dance, and fully within our technical range. There was a poetic quality in the frieze-like group at the back of the stage, arms upward, fingers splayed, and wide _unmoving eyes, in the crouched ‘figure at the right, moving slowly on to her back, a small, neat, sophisticated cameo. Subdued lighting on the black tunics gave just the right touch of rich’ sadness. * * * ‘THE 1947 programme was in some degree recapitulation, since seven of the 13 dances had been on the two earlier programmes, though some had now been modified. Of the new dances, Symphonic Variations, to the music of César Franck, was the group’s most ambitious attempt to illustrate musical form, danced by two opposing groups, similar in character to the two main _

themes in the variations. With no dramatic content to carry the line, the movements in a dance of this kind need to be as exhilarating and evocative as possible. I rather feel, too, that it can only succeed fully where the technical skill of the dancers is high. The group do not yet have this, and though the dance was lucid and compact it lacked something in excitement. The main dance of this programme was "Hiroshima," in every way the group’s most mature work. The theme was suggested by a passage in John Hersey’s report on Hiroshima, and dramatizes a small incident from it. As it was performed ; "Hiroshima" could well stand as a small but genuinely imaginative poetic work , on the tragedy as a whole. The first ; part of the dance shows the people of . Hiroshima about their normal business.

, To express this, a combination of bells and percussion was used, which was wholly suitable. The bomb falls, there is chaos and silence. Very quietly, the _ Slow theme from the Schubert: Death . and the Maiden Quartet steals in. A , woman blinded picks her way across the littered _stage-someone clutches . her.. With one hand; she pushes her other arm before her face. The eyes ‘do not change-she is quite blind. This passage was most moving. A "woman goes mad, and writhing, leaves the stage. Another, without legs, hobbles on her stumps, seeking aid. A _ light Passes over the dead forms, ,illumining , each one briefly, and the stage darkens. _ That was all. For my part, I regretted the decision to read "The Bomb that _ fell on America," by Hermann Hagedorn, with this dance. It seemed to say nothing more than the atom. bomb _ clichés that one. may read now ~ every day in the Press, and the refrain of "God. have mercy on us" would havebeen more telling if left for the dance » to imply in its own idiom. Kt remained, ' however, a deeply moving work. a % a = HIS gives some answer to the questions asked in the first paragraph. _Some account should also be given of the difficulties which the New Dance ‘ Group have surmounted in order to » present their three programmes and 24 dances. The group has no funds, beyond

a small contribution from the dancers themselves which barely pays _ for fecords and hiring halls. There is no regular accompanist, a grievous lack. Several pianists have helped from time to time, but mostly they have been too busy to give of their time regularly. Furthermore, the composition of the group has been very fluid; only two of the members were in all three programmes, and hence each year a new group had to be broken in, and any progress or consolidation from year to year was difficult. For this reason the programmes evolved each year less and less democratically. This was a defect, but rooted in the nature of the group. For anything really creative to be achieved,.there must be a more or less permanent group of dancers, six or eight would be enough, who would carry on

each year the best work of the year before, and so in time develop something individual, the beginnings of a tradition. And more important still, a group like ours must have men dancers. A programme by women dancers alone seems to have the flatness of a friezea one-dimensional pattern which may be considerably varied, may delight ‘the eye, excite the senses for a time, but leaves one finally unappeased. I believe that the dramatic possibilities of modern dance can be explored fully only by men and women dancing together. Then why have men not joined the group? There are probably several reasons. A dancer needs a good physique, and most healthy young New Zéalanders are too occupied with winter sports to be able to work with the group on Saturday mornings, But this is not enough. The prejudice against men. dancers _is endemic inthis country. It is; rio doubt, a carry-over from the debasement of ballet at the beginning of the century, when, in accordance with the romantic tradition the ballerina was a fleshless, ethereal sylph who held the stage, with the man waiting in the wings to lift her, and perhaps dance an occasiénal pas seul while she rested. There ‘was no place for a strongly masculine dancer who really wanted to dance, and hence ballet has not, on the whole, attracted . (continued on next page)

NEW DANCE GROUP (continued from previous page) them. A male dancer now is a very queer fish. For instance, during my year with the group, I was present at a convivial gathering one night,. and some of the guests were discussing male ballet dancers and how they could not under. stand any man wanting to do that sort of thing. This is not an uncommon nor a surprising attitude in a time where our only genuine and spontaneous ritual gatherings are at football, films, or races, and one can feel the force of the social pressure against any form of ritual activity not accepted uncritically by the crowd. Despite this, I enjoyed my year with the group. I learnt many, things about movement, particular! that I did not know how to move a body from the waist upwards, and more, I learnt something of the elation which comes from the sheer joy of moving in a disciplined group. But although 15 women and one man wate better than 15 women alone, it was still not very satisfactory, and ‘having struck my blow for modern dance, I did not rejoin ‘the group in 1947. % # * ‘THE New Dance Group falls into the main stream of modern expressive dance which began with the decay of traditional ballet in the early years of this century in America and Ger‘many. Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, in America, and Mary Wigman in Germany each in much the same way, urged freer movement in dance, ‘and a wholesale jettison of stale ballet conventions, each returning in some degree to the impulses which first produced ballet at the court of Louis XIV. Though the modern movement is still hampered by a lack of tradition and therefore of a guiding discipline, it yet partakes of a much larger tradition, the urge to dance, and express one’s joy in being in rhythmic movement,. an impulse as old as the human:race, from which all ritual art stems, and which, try as we might in an industrial society, we have not yet quite killed. In its modest way, the New Dance Group is helping to keep it alive. (The photographs on these pages, together with our cover illustration, were taken by RRTIAN BRAKE, of the Spencer Digby Studio.) | | |