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Watchful Eyes: Renowned composer-singer-creator gave her time to see WFU dance class choreography
Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman
Members of Christina Tsoules Soriano’s dance-composition class at Wake Forest University rehearse for their spring concert. From left, they are: Alison King, James Blair and Allison Hagaman.
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Published: April 19, 2009
When Meredith Monk participated in "Creativity: Worlds in the Making," a symposium held last month at Wake Forest University, Christina Tsoules Soriano felt a special welcome was in order.
So she invited Monk, a pioneer in interdisciplinary performance, to visit her dance-composition class at WFU. The students were working on an intriguing assignment in which they took already-existing choreography and reshaped it to fit Monk's music. They were also exploring how movement emerges from the kinds of extended vocal techniques that Monk helped develop.
Soriano expected Monk to pop in for 10 minutes, take in what the students had done, exchange a few pleasantries and be on her way. That's not what happened.
"Her first response was, ‘I want to see it again,'" Soriano said. "We were very excited; she was staying longer than I thought she was."
A long discussion ensued. Monk gave the students lots of feedback -- and encouraged them to transform a class assignment into a piece for a public performance. This can be seen beginning Thursday when the WFU presents its spring dance concert in the MainStage Theatre on campus. "I think it's pretty cool that it got this momentum and it's building the way it's building," Soriano said.
The piece, which reflects Monk's feedback, was still without a name last week. It will feature eight women and one man from Soriano's dance-composition class performing movements to selections from Atlas, an opera; Book of Days, a film; and a CD called Dolmen Music.
The choreography is influenced by the students' previous training in a wide range of styles, including classical ballet, contemporary and jazz.
"We all are very different and yet we were able to come together and make this really interesting piece," said junior Stephany Rayburn, one of the performers. Rayburn credited Monk with both helping the dancer/choreographers to find common ground and to celebrate their differences.
Rayburn said that Monk thought it was "really interesting" that a woman doing modern steps was chasing and running around others doing classical ballet.
"We're trying to accentuate that in the rehearsals we're doing now," she said. "I thought that was really interesting. I'm a theater major, and that's kind what we're studying at the moment. How can we make things more interesting? How can we use everything we know?"
The eclectic nature of the choreography didn't always work in Monk's eyes.
"In some sections, she really loved that juxtaposition," Soriano said. "In other sections, she asked us to reexamine some of the choices, some of the movement qualities that were being juxtaposed.
Monk also asked students to choreograph musical pieces in their entirety, rather than fragments of them. And she felt that students' choreography would be more effective if they looked at imagery in Book of Days that accompanied a musical segment called "Fields/Clouds."
"She didn't say ‘I would do this,'" Soriano said. "She was (saying), ‘Just go back and look at this and see how it can change.' The students have to arrive at these choices themselves -- which I think is an important thing."
Monk asked the students lots of questions about their artistic choices.
"It was good for the students to communicate with her what their process was," Soriano said. "That's part of being a choreographer."
Monk is a composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films and installations. Her work thrives at what press materials describe as the "intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound in an effort to weave together new modes of perception." She has received the MacArthur "Genius" Award and two Guggenheim Fellowships, among many other honors.
And yet nothing about her came across as forbidding to Soriano and her students.
"She just was so gracious," Soriano said. "I want to stress how warm and approachable and just generous she is as an artist."
Soriano said that she couldn't really speak to the quality of the piece her students have created. But that's not the point.
"Truly, how it looks in the end is less important than the process in putting it together," she said. "That's what they'll remember."
■ The Wake Forest University Dance Company will present its annual spring dance concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and at 2 p.m. next Sunday in the MainStage Theatre in the Scales Fine Arts Center on campus. Tickets are $10, $5 for seniors, students and children; call 758-5295.
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
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