Meredith Monk Plays TESC

The Cooper Point Journal Volume 10, Issue 12 (January 28, 1982)

Meredith Monk brought her ensemble of song, dance and film to the Experimental Theatre in this the opening stages of her current West Coast/ European tour. In the space of her two-hour performance, Ms. Monk ran the gamut from sonorous tone-poems to the screams and shrieks of uninhibited release. Throughout, the audience sat captivated by the sheer power of Ms. Monk’s creative genius which shone bright through the haze of trivia and mundanity that passes itself off as art in our time. The opening numbers, Solos for Voice and Piano, served well as an overture to the rest of the evening’s performance. These pieces highlighted Ms. Monk’s impressive vocal abilities, in counterpoint to the simplistic, repetitious piano chords, she employed as anchors for the audience to hold onto.

At times lulling, like the gurgling of child in the cradle, then stormily aching toward a crescendo, her imagery remained bold, insightful, lucid and fluid throughout. A curious blend this– the minimal strictly tonal piano structuring acting as a foil to a dazzling variety of vocal verbal and non-verbal affectations.

An excerpt from her film Quarry followed. As with all of her pieces, this film without soundtrack challenged the audience to interpret the images for themselves. I saw the white figures scurrying in and out of their erstwhile hiding places amongst the scree of giant rocks as being like rodents caught in their meaningless machinations. Later, clinging motionless to driftwood in the quarry’s basin, they seemed like drowning rats holding on apathetically to life. A friend saw the entire film as an analogy to Bergman’s work. And, indeed, there was a Bergman-esque flavor in these contrived images. But suffice it to say her work is not only open to myriad interpretations – it positively demands them.

The one dance piece, or rather piece with minimal movement, Turtle Dreams by name, came next. This was a set-piece for four automatons moving like a school of fish in unison to some invisible cue. One gets the distinct impression that he or she is an onlooker to a strange otherworldly ritual that moves the initiated in a pattern-language which follows its own inner logic and tempo. And one feels that he/she would like to be a part of that world in flux, at least for a time. Additionally, passing glances shot from one dancer to another added an ironic, dramatic tension to the piece.

Intermission found the audience oscillating between bemusement and enthralled rapture. Comments bouncing around the hall went from, “She sings like Yoko Ono” to “Yeah, but is it art?'” While this last note was said half-seriously, it does underlie a fundamental concern any artist striving to push forward the limits of their art while still retaining a rapport with their audience. In a recent interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Monk broached this subject, she said, “I rarely use texts because voice itself is such a strong, rich language. You hardly need another language on top of it. The syllables I use are extensions at the music. I don’t think English is any more interesting.” And later, “I can do my music all over the world. People can respond directly, without having to go through language I’m trying to approach a vocal music that’s both primordial and futuristic, and this is my way.” And it was all her own way Wednesday night.

The final piece, her tour de force, was the presentation of Dolmen Music, Monk’s piece which won the West German award for LP of the year. The ensemble executed the piece for vocals and bass with finesse. Dolmens, as Ms. Monk explained in her introduction, are ancient stone monoliths, a la Stonehenge. He piece is a perfect reflection of those enigmatic structures—rekindling through the harmony of the deep, rich texturing of voices and the image of medieval monks all darkly shrouded in hoods and robes. It brought the audience back to their imaginary adolescence in pre-Renaissance England or France much as her earlier pieces gave us flash-backs to the cradle and primeval Africa.

Ron Roxbury, a member of Monk’s troupe, spoke about Dolmen. The piece, according to Roxbury, is keyed on subtle signal changes which announce themselves with a degree of randomness in the style of John Cage. No two performances of Dolmen are ever exactly the same as they hinge on these changes with their built-in indeterminacy factors. As an example, Roxbury spoke about the segment of the piece in which he strikes the bass strings with wooden chopsticks. While his cue to begin striking is fixed, the length of his additional percussion is wholly determined by chance—he does it until he stops. This element of Dolmen is exciting for the performer because of the freedom in performance, said Roxbury.
In all it was an exciting performance of exuberance and wit. A special appreciation should be extended to Richard Nesbitt for bringing an artist of world-class stature to TESC.

A tip-of-the-hat, too, goes out to Dan Crowe and hos sound team for a superlative job with a difficult to stage performance.
And lastly, it is most gratifying to see the overwhelming response to Monk’s show. To get a S.R.O. crowd for so challenging, so avant-garde a performer as Monk speaks well for TESC. Obviously there is an audience here for high-quality work.