Brute (1994)

Sep 9

By 1993 Andrew Burashko and I had a small number of works we performed together – Ten Suggestions, Brahms Waltzes, Her Heart, Romeo and Juliet Before Parting (the solo piano version of the orchestral score), and Accident (to Francis Poulenc’s Elegie for Horn and Piano, with James Somerville) – and I programmed just one or two of these pieces at a time. But in 1994, I suggested the idea of creating a recital program together. I was imagining a program for the two of us with the musical integrity and ambition to stand on its own as a piano recital. “In that case,” Andrew responded, “we need to choose some important music”, and he provided a list of piano works for me to listen to and consider. I chose Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 6 in A major Opus 82. Composed in 1939/40, this is a work of epic proportions that holds within it the brutality, agony, perversion, and destruction of that time.

Early in the choreographic process I found myself overwhelmed by the scope of the music, but then a book gifted to me by my father (Howard Gartner’s Creating Minds) inspired the use of Picasso’s monumental painting Guernica as a primary reference. I was suddenly charged with choreographic ideas. The painting’s scale, its composition, the figures and objects it depicts, the history that it holds – all of the learning that arose from my research – is forcefully alive within the choreography, its essence vividly captured in the extraordinary costume by Jane Townsend and in Marc Parent’s sensational lighting.

Brute became the centrepiece of a concert program titled music for piano and solo dancer that premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for the Vancouver Recital Society in April of 1994. For the next 16 years Andrew and I continued to build a repertoire together with unforgettable performances in theatres and concert halls across Canada and in New York, Los Angeles, at Jacob’s Pillow, in Copenhagen, Ghent, and The Haag. - PB

"stark and disturbing" Kaija Pepper, Dance International

related links

To learn more about the genesis and creation process for Brute, watch the episode of Peggy’s Influences and Intersections video series below.

To read more about Picasso’s Guernica visit Artnews.com here.

To read more about this work, and the theme of androgyny in Peggy’s work, read her 2012 essay entitled Androgyny: expansive possibilities for reading the human figure in contemporary dance

Peggy gifted Brute to Rex Harrington and Sasha Ivanochko as part of her Choreographer’s Trust project in 2005. Read more about The Choreographer’s Trust here. Year Three DVDs and booklets that feature Brute are available for loan from Dance Collection Danse.

credits

choreography and performance:
Peggy Baker

music:
Serge Prokofiev
(Sonata no. 6 in A major, op. 82, 1942)

costume design:
Jane Townsend

lighting design:
Marc Parent

piano:
Andrew Burashko

subsequent performers:
Rex Harrington and Sasha Ivanochko
with Andrew Burashko (piano)
Katherine Semchuk with Younggun Kim (piano)

award nomination

1994 Dora Mavor Moore award nomination for Outstanding New Choreography, Dance Division for Peggy Baker

premiere

Vancouver
April 24, 1994
Vancouver Playhouse
Vancouver Recital Society
concert: music for piano and solo dancer

subsequent presentations