Inspiration for CANON

The music of the pas de deux, titled “Canon A” from Conlon Nancarrow’s “3 Canons for Ursula”, is a 2 voiced canon played on a piano with each part being played in its own time signature and speed.

The treble line’s time signature is in 7/8 and the base is in 5/8.

Jehbreal used the time signatures in the score to be the names of the primary male and female characters of the ballet and this metrical opposition is the structure used to write the script for the entire film (i.e. bass line (male character) introduced first then joined by treble (female character); a clash occurs then treble line (female character) finishes first  and leaves the bass (male character) to finish alone).

An Excerpt from Jehbreal’s Thesis

In the Grande Pas de Deux that culminates CANON, I wanted to experiment with merging the extremes of formalism and storytelling. I wanted to test how “abstract” I could make a dance while using the artistic materials at my disposal (movement, music, and image) to still generate meaning that relates directly to, and develops, the narrative in which it lives. It was my goal to recover the romantic and classical ballet period’s emphasis on storytelling and the classical formula of “pure dance” pas de deux made by Petipa (i.e. adagio entrance, male variation, female variation and coda), but to also incorporate the aesthetics and choreographic techniques of choreographers like Mikhail Fokine, George Balanchine, the postmodernists and William Forsythe. Drawing inspiration from Fokine and Balanchine, where the story and emotion conveyed in their ballets no longer required a plot, I created movement that developed as a story itself. Utilizing the juxtaposition of classical ballet and replacing mime with everyday gestures, I referenced the work of Forsythe and the postmodern dance tradition.

In the Romantic Era, August Bournonville made many innovations in this direction of merging formalism and representation in his version of La Sylphide (1836), originally choreographed by Filippo Taglioni (1832). Fortunately, his choreography has been maintained over the centuries, but its popularity has long since been overshadowed by the increasing ostentation of dancers in Petipa’s ballets. La Sylphide contains the nuanced story of James Reuben (a farmer) who leaves Effie (his fiancé) to marry a Sylph only to be cursed by a witch. Sally Banes argues in her book Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage that the story is told physically through the distinct movement qualities of character sects of farmers (male and female), witches, and sylphs. Banes analyzes the movement of the ballet’s characters as a means to generate the story of the ballet, distinguishing the dominant movement qualities of the collective social groups and the individual principal characters. As an example, she illuminates how the interlocked arms of the rustic, “earthbound”, partnered dances of the farmers is bound, while the Sylph’s movement in Laban Movement Analysis terms is free (Banes 18). This choreographic distinction shows how the Sylphide is a social outsider. Banes states, “that contrast, taken literally, perhaps explains why James has become obsessed with her, for she seems to represent a realm outside of, and free from, social constraints” (18). Even in performing similar steps the characters embody them differently, thus imbuing them with new and individuated meanings (Banes 17). I have deepened this train of thought in my creative work by enhancing the detail in the specificity of each character’s embodied relationship to themselves, each other, and their environment which includes the music they dance to.

The music of the pas de deux, titled “Canon A” from Conlon Nancarrow’s “3 Canons for Ursula”, is a 2 voiced canon played on a piano with each part being played in its own time signature and speed. The treble line’s time signature is in 7/8 and the base is in 5/8. I used the time signatures in the score to be the names of the primary male and female characters of the ballet and this metrical opposition is the structure I used to write the script for the entire film (i.e. bass line (male character) introduced first then joined by treble (female character); a clash occurs then treble line (female character) finishes first  and leaves the bass (male character) to finish alone). Since, traditionally, the male voice is associated with base notes and the female voice with treble notes one could possibly hear a man and woman arguing upon first hearing the piece. Within the music’s short duration lies not only a momentary bout within a relationship, but also the entire trajectory of a courtship from its inception to its untimely completion. The two musical lines (like the characters themselves) are made of the same materials that operate at different speeds and registers. They are similar enough to complement each other for a time, but in the end can't finish the journey together in unison. Balanchine visualized music in a similar way in ballets like Concerto Barocco where two women vie with each other as the two solo violins of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Concerto in D minor for Two Violins”. I take this idea further into narrative by giving more specific and complex character psychologies to the respective piano lines as well as a completely fleshed out narrative arc, derived from the music, for the microcosmic form of the Grande Pas and the macrocosm of the cineballet.

I began by generating movements from three simple hand gestures (offering an open palm, turning the palm downward, and striking the back of the downwardly turned palm with the other hand) to introduce a common subject for both dancers to embody, but to also show a variance with how the subject is handled, like the King Lear and Duke Signor example above. These gestures are later expanded and developed into ballet vocabulary. The dancers (in the beginning of their solos in the Grande Pas) are not aligned with their traditional respective clefs as they have taken on the identity of their partner in the opening adagio and over the course of the film. After the adagio entrance of both dancers, the first variation is performed by 7/8 (the female dancer), who dances to 5/8’s (the male dancer) music and vice versa to show a complete loss and challenging of traditional identity. The two dance alone but simultaneously, as opposed to the canonical solo variations performed in isolation onstage, separated by a split screen with identical, mirrored camera choreography as a metaphor for the loneliness that can be experienced even while being in proximity to others. This sequence is thoroughly composed and choreographed cinematically in opposition to the hand- held camera used during more pedestrian sequences to show this pas de deux as an expression of extreme emotions and elevated poetic language. There are times, once the split screen is gone, when the dancers even ignore the music in order to enjoy unregulated time with each other. However, as they get comfortable together, haphazard, uncertain and even dangerous partnering seeps in. The choreography is laced with physical and psychological triggers that cause the dancers to go backwards in their memory for the movement material that led them to their misfortune. This discord keeps the partnering from moving forward and leads the two individuals to link into the separate canonical music apart from each other. This time they link into their respective traditional time signatures, eventually leaving one person onstage alone as the iris closes on him.

The partnering of a pas de deux that occurs earlier in the film between 7/8 and her former lover Daté was created as the antithesis of the Grand Pas De Deux. In the earlier pas de deux, “Love in Bloom”, the grips in the partnering are tender, open, vulnerable and equally supportive of both the male and female. These qualities are in direct opposition to the grips and choreography in the Grande Pas which are not as stable in quality or in construction. The dynamic between 7/8 and Daté is that of trust building through stability. The dynamic in the Grande Pas is bi-polar (from loving gestures, to abrasive strikes) and embodied as abrupt, constrictive, and violent.

The use of black and white in the film is a metaphor of things that can be seen/known (white) and things that are unseen/unknown (black). The characters environment around them, in which they cognize and can “know”, is white and encircled by a black iris that, as it expands, reveals more white space around them. The dancers themselves are black as a symbol of the inner “self” that is unknown. The spatial awareness extends to each other and eventually comes to include the entire space once the dancers join each other. Even in its entirety, the boundaries of the space are limited as they are dancing on a massive white box. The box metaphor is introduced earlier at the Grace Hill Rehab Center in a game where the characters reveal things that are known about them through small white boxes and things that are unknown about them through black boxes. The massive white box on which they dance is surrounded by endless black space, the unknown. Their thematic movement material that was used to love and abuse themselves comes to do the same to their partner when solo material develops into partnered material.