In a Landscape (1995)

Sep 29

Pianist Andrew Burashko and I often gave one another books or CDs as gifts, and for our opening night at The Kitchen in New York in 1995, he gave me a CD of solo piano music by John Cage performed by Stephen Drury. The first track on the album was a piece from 1948 entitled In a Landscape. I instantly feel in love in with the music’s gently cascading melodies and the cresting and lulls of its compositional asymmetries. I lucked into an opportunity to perform a new work for fFIDA, (Toronto’s sadly no-longer Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists), and because Andrew was elsewhere, teamed up with pianist Henry Kucharzyk for the premiere.

The music took me inside of what I described then as my “creature body” – an interior world of sensations and movements riding the contours of joints and the pathways of blood, bone and muscle. The cycles of ritual that emerged elicited fragile balances and distortions that carved the lines of movement like the scarring and pruning used to cultivate a bonsai. Though this dance is brief, it moves through a timeframe that opens and elongates every second. The original staging of this work included a stunning costume by Jane Townsend – a kind of cocoon for the torso that left my bare arms and legs looking like the appendages of an insect – and a set of sculptural pieces by Kurt Swinghammer, some of which glowed at various times. Marc Parent, who lit this original version, later created a completely different treatment that called on the dancer to navigate a constantly morphing circle of light (imagine a rotating lava lamp projected onto the floor) that was devilishly difficult to balance within and which gave the impression of a dancer moving on a surface sliced out of the Milky Way.

I hold dear performances of In a Landscape with Henry, and later, and over many years, with Andrew. Performances of this dance by others, most especially Christopher T. Grider, Tanya Howard and Andrea Nann, have moved me deeply. - PB

"A finely crafted solo, with carefully articulated movement perfectly matched to a John Cage composition." - Lewis Hertzman, Dance Magazine

“The estimable Andrea Nann puts her personal stamp on Baker’s 1995 solo In a Landscape; the choreographer’s own remembered presence in the same work hovers like a distant echo.” - Michael Crabb , The Toronto Star

related links

Listen to Kurt Swinghammer being Interviewed by Steve Waxman here on The Creationists.

Watch the documentary John Cage. From Zero here on YouTube.

Peggy gifted In a Landscape to Christopher Grider and Tanya Howard as part of her Choreographer’s Trust project in 2002. Read more about The Choreographer’s Trust here. Year One DVDs and booklets that feature In a Landscape are available for loan from Dance Collection Danse.

credits

choreography: Peggy Baker

music: John Cage (In a Landscape, 1948)

costume design: Jane Townsend

set design: Kurt Swinghammer

lighting design: Marc Parent

original pianist: Henry Kucharzyk

original dancer: Peggy Baker

subsequent performers:
Christopher T. Grider
Tanya Howard
Andrea Nann
Andrew Burashko (piano)
John Kameel Farah (piano)

award nomination
2013 Dora Mavor Moore award nomination for Andrea Nann for Outstanding Performance, Dance Division.

premiere

Toronto
August 16, 18 & 19, 1995
Buddies-in-Bad-Times Theatre
fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (fFIDA)