Composer/Choreographer
Dance Perspectives, v. 16,
pp. 8-11 (1963)
In this article a number of composers and
choreographers were asked their thoughts on the
interrelationship of music and dance. This was
Vivian Fine’s response.
Music and dance are two languages with a
common source. They come out of the same
stuff—the same stuff, as Shakespeare wrote,
“as dreams are made on.” Before an
idea finds its way into form, there is the as yet
unlabelled sensation—a sensation that one
recognizes as the modest herald of a new work.
Out of this basic sensation of movement the
dancer creates choreography; the composer,
music.
What is different in composing for dance is
that the initial stimulus is not connected with a
sonorous image. In writing for dance, the musical
ideas are stimulated by ideas the dancer has
conceived. These may be ideas of a dramatic
nature or, as in the earlier works I wrote, the
completed choreography. In either case, the body
sensations that are the response to an idea
(though one is hardly aware of them) are similar
for dancer and musician.
This underlying sense of movement is the first
expression of a feeling we carry with us always,
but keep concealed from our awareness: the
feeling of the inexorability of the time-flow.
The relationship between music and dance might be
called a dialogue concerning silence. It is the
silence that is the silent motion of the flow of
time. We measure the passage of time by the
motion of the stars: we see in this sidereal
movement a demarcation of the measureless
universe, without end in time or space. So, too,
do movement and sound evoke the mystery without
beginning or end. Within their ordered measures
are framed a portion of unending time and
space.
Each art tells of this mystery with its own
signs. Music speaks through symbols we hear;
dance speaks to the eye. So the two
sisters—one having no voice—can speak
at once, each telling us of their mysterious
mother.
Evoked by imagery outside the contained world
of sound the musician inhabits, music for dance
has a special character. This can perhaps be
described negatively, as music not having the
same intensity of articulation required for
“absolute” music. Music for dance can
“stand alone,” but it still relies to
some degree on the choreographic and dramatic
ideas that inspired it. The composer articulates
the dimensions of his sonorous universe through
the musical resources at his command. His burden
is less when the movements of dance articulate
forms in space.
In modern dance it is not the metrical aspects
of rhythm that unite dance and music. In the free
interweaving of movement and sound there is a
link to deeper rhythm. Free of superficial points
of rhythmic contact, music and dance create
patterns of inter-relatedness that enhance the
total work.
Roger Sessions has said: “Music is a
gesture.” In composing for dance one must
have a willingness to absorb from the dancer his
basic gesture and to inflect the musical gesture
with the images of dance and theatre.
The above speculations are strictly after the
fact. I have written for dance intuitively,
without theorizing. The problems were no
different from those of composing any other
music—except that the feeling of
“rightness” was related to something
outside, rather than to the conscience regulating
the sonorous world of the composer.
Of the five principal works I have written for
dance, two are in a humorous vein: The Race of
Life, written for Doris Humphrey, and Opus 51,
for Charles Weidman. The problem was to capture
the kind of comedy involved, the particular area
of the human dilemma. In addition, The Race of
Life (based on drawings by James Thurber) had a
story and definite characters, while Opus 51 had
neither. In both works I had to discover the
serious musical stance from which humor could be
achieved.
In comedy one has an especial sense of being
both doer and observer. In Thurber’s world,
marvelously made to live in the theatre by Miss
Humphrey, our fears and foibles are
plain—we are able to laugh because Thurber
himself is so very human and intelligent. He
shows us the war between men and women, their
competitiveness and triangular jealousies. The
actions of his people are never threatening, nor
do they come close to real anger or hate. While
we know these jealous quarrels are no laughing
matter in life, for the moment we see them
without fear of consequences. Perhaps it is this
dual state of being both actor and spectator that
gives an air of elegance to good comedy. All good
comedians have a certain meticulousness about
them.
Opus 51, lacking story or characters, was
almost pure comedy, if there is such a thing. In
it Weidman achieved a kind of collage. No attempt
was made to create situations leading to a comic
“point.” Instead, we were shown
unrelated actions strung together, the ultimate
expression of the absurd. Comedy makes the
everyday seem absurd by taking it seriously;
leading us close to disaster, and then saying:
“but it’s not real!” Weidman,
using illogical sequences of action, succeeded in
making us laugh by treating these sequences as
seriously as if they were the normal course of
events. In this rearrangement of reality, we
sensed that reality was perhaps just another
arrangement, and we enjoyed the upsetting of the
proper order of things.
The music for both these dances was written
after the dance was composed, although not after
the entire work was finished. I would write a
section as each new part of the dance was
completed. In composing for choreography there is
the problem of developing a musical structure and
continuity. I was able to do this by not
composing for individual moments or patterns, but
by sensing the impulse that moved the dancer.
The first of the two works I wrote for Hanya
Holm, Tragic Exodus, was a single movement, about
ten minutes in length. They too are Exiles was
longer, in a number of movements. Both dealt with
“social” themes, but the strong
emotional drive in these works made musical
identification comparatively easy. In Tragic
Exodus, inspired by the plight of the Jews under
Hitler, I used a baritone voice employing only
vowel sounds. This recalled Hebrew chants,
although no authentic material was used. The
piano was plucked, adding to the sense of history
with sounds reminiscent of the lyre. They Too are
Exiles had sections with a strong ethnic flavor,
which presented the problem of creating of
homogeneous musical fabric. This large work
really needed orchestral support, but in 1940 two
pianists at one piano were the principal musical
resource of dancer and composer.
Alcestis, written for Martha Graham, was
composed from a script prepared by the
choreographer, in contrast to the previous works,
which were composed from the dances themselves.
Miss Graham’s compelling power is as
operative in the composer-dancer relationship as
it is in the theatre. But in the working
relationship she never overwhelms. Rather, she
evokes through the magic of her imagery and
feeling. She made me feel I was writing, not
about an ancient myth, but about the living
present. Of all the dance works I have written, I
feel Alcestis comes off best as a musical work.
This is due in good part, I believe, to the fact
that my only guide-lines were dramatic, allowing
more freedom in the development of the musical
material.
Archilochos, in a poetic monologue written in
the seventh century B.C., urges himself to
“understand the rhythm that holds mankind
in its bonds.” I have tried to indicate
that it is within the bonding rhythm that both
dancer and musician find their common ground. To
make us aware of flow by stopping it is a basic
contradiction in the work of the artist who, like
Prometheus, is bound. Chained to the rock of his
mortality, the artist seeks to create immortal
gesture.