Brahms Waltzes (1992)
This week we arrive in 1992 and look at Peggy’s third major solo created on and for herself, the timeless Brahms Waltzes:
“An invitation to bring a solo program to Peterborough through Public Energy Performing Arts came with some commissioning money for a new work, so Brahms Waltzes marks the very first work of mine to garner to an investment in my choreographic development by a presenter – trailblazing contemporary dance champion, Bill Kimball.
Although having a pianist perform with me for the premiere far exceeded the scope of the budget for this run with Bill, the choice of an early work for piano by Johannes Brahms was certainly inspired by the possibility of having Andrew Burashko perform with me at some point in the future.
Annabelle Gamson had taught me Isadora Duncan’s dances to the same series of waltzes, and I curious to see how I might respond to the music myself. As I developed the choreography I could feel myself weighing the many influences on my dancing and asking myself what to let of go, what to go beyond, what to get deeper inside. I think I kept coming back to this dance as a kind of touchstone because it holds that time of transition so transparently.
Brahms Waltzes rides the uncomplicated joys of the music, but it also holds two central metaphors: sleep as an integrating force during a time of personal change and growth, and the demarcation of a new period in one’s life as the crossing of a threshold.” PB
"Mixes graceful lyricism with an economy of gesture and even moments of complete stillness in a solo that spans explosions of power with almost meditative serenity.” - Michael Crabb, The Toronto Star
Peggy gifted this work to Kate Holden and Jessica Runge as part of Year One of her Choreographer’s Trust project. Find out more about The Choreographer’s Trust here, and read about Kate’s reinterpretation of this piece as this body of memory / Brahms Waltzes in The Toronto Star here.
To read more about sleep as a metaphor in art and dance, read this article in The Huffington Post.
