Why the Brook Wept (1996)
As we continued developing our repertoire together, Andrew Burashko suggested another John Cage score, Ophelia, composed for the American dancer Jean Erdman in 1946. That the music had been written explicitly for a choreographic portrait of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet was both compelling and intimidating, and I hesitated to take it on. But the more I listened to the music, the more amazed and fascinated I was by the ways in which it captured Ophelia’s dilemma. Finally, I could not turn away.
To begin with, I worked strictly with the script of the play developing sequences, scenes and images based on the text. Once I had worked my way through the words I went back to the music, allowing the score to guide me in arranging, distilling, and refining the choreography. Also very much on my mind was the John Everett Millais painting Ophelia, (1851-2), which I had seen at the Tate in London many years earlier. I chose not to research the original choreography, so there are no intentional allusions to Erdman’s dance in my own. The description of Ophelia’s death as a fall “into a weeping brook” inspired my title.
One of the most potent images the music inspired for me was the idea of the pianist as Hamlet, and his performance of the score as his own wrenching self-interrogation. So the piano is positioned in profile on stage left, with the pianist’s back is to the dancer. At the end of the piece, the dancer is left on the floor, crumpled against the back legs of the piano bench, and once the final notes have decayed, the pianist closes the keyboard, stands and closes the piano’s lid and exists the stage. Whenever we performed this work, it closed the program, including on Art of Time Ensemble’s program, If music be… first staged in 2010. - PB
“The two dance sequences are beautifully rendered: Tanya Howard and Patrick Lavoie, as choreographed by James Kudelka in the Act III scene where Romeo and Juliet part after a night of lovemaking; and the remarkable Peggy Baker dancing Ophelia’s madness to music of John Cage to close the show.”
- John Terauds, The Toronto Star
"Cage composed the music for a 1946 dance by Jean Erdman, but Baker has made it her own, as much acted as danced. She passes through a full spectrum of moods, from languor to frenzy. When Burashko closes the piano and leaves her fallen figure on the stage, it is the spirit leaving the body."
- Susan Walker, The Toronto Star
related links
To learn more about the work of John Cage watch John Cage. From Zero here on Youtube.
credits
choreography and performance:
Peggy Baker
music:
John Cage (Ophelia, Music for a Dance by Jean Erdman, 1946)
piano:
Andrew Burashko
original costume design:
Caroline O'Brien
lighting design:
Marc Parent
awards
2006-07 Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding Performance, Dance Division for Peggy Baker
premiere
Toronto
January 11 - 13, 1996
Betty Oliphant Theatre
subsequent presentations
media links
See 1998 and 1996 in the media and awards archive
photography
As credited.
