COMPOSERS ARE FROM VENUS,
CHOREOGRAPHERS ARE FROM MARS

by John LaSala

When choreographer Angela Jones walked into a New York Chapter meeting last spring, she must have felt as if she were entering a different country – perhaps England, where they seem to speak the same language, but the words don’t necessarily mean the same thing. Although the doors to chapter meetings are open to artists of all sorts, musicians clearly dominate the scene, and we tend to forget that artists of different disciplines can view art from entirely different perspectives – perspectives that can enrich our work if we choose to embrace them.

She had come in search of a composer to collaborate on a modern dance adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Her budget was low and her sense of urgency was high. The first workshop performance was less than a month away, and some of the choreography had already been laid out. Angela was ambitious, and I had a feeling that, if it worked out, this could be the biggest thing that has happened to my career. It was definitely an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

Only in hindsight can I appreciate the difference between what I heard at that meeting and how I would hear the same proposal today. Like most emerging composers, my experience with collaborators was largely limited to other musicians. Despite different artistic sensibilities, we almost always had an immediate compatibility; we spoke the same language. This isn’t necessarily the case with collaborators from different disciplines.

I compiled a CD of past work and met with Angela and her collaborator, Noel MacDuffie. The pair are the co-choreographers and primary dancers in their company, MacDuffie/Jones Dance. I watched them work through some of their choreography, and afterward they played excerpts from my CD. As they listened, I watched their faces intensely for reactions to the music. They seemed pleased enough, though I had no idea how they saw my music fitting with their choreography.

Over the next nine months, the three of us collaborated and clashed in different combinations. The mental adjustments necessary to bring our different disciplines and sometimes-disparate artistic visions together were trying on all of us. I would hear things like, "It just doesn’t work. How about something more like … well, I don’t know … like, just different." In return, I would throw fits like, "Look! Just try to make it work. I worked long and hard on that section, and cutting it out would disrupt the whole composition."

This was a crash course in both a foreign language and foreign diplomacy. Somehow, poetry was supposed to arise from it.

These collaborative bumps were all very necessary. As in any relationship, one needs to learn when to push and when to give. I slowly came to understand that the function of music is often radically different for the choreographer than it is the composer. Likewise, there are volumes to be read in the language of dance, which the uninitiated may misinterpret or completely fail to grasp. The simple contrast between seeing and hearing ideas unfold creates a radically different perspective in itself.

The structure of most (or at least my own) music often depends on chronology and superposition. The presence of each section of a composition is carefully placed depending on the placement of every other section. To some degree, this is done almost intuitively.

For Angela and Noel, however, this sort of chronological structure seemed a lot less rigid. As I would watch them work, I would see sections of choreography shortened, lengthened, swapped, and switched around again, all in a few minutes’ time. It was something like watching a giant jigsaw puzzle being assembled.

One of our major challenges was to create music and dance that worked together but whose structures could also be somewhat independent.

Each scene for The Snow Queen was created in a slightly different manner depending on whose idea it started with. Because of this need to endlessly improvise and reinvent our approach, there was no real formula to follow. Though sometimes frustrating, it really forced all of us to work hard to understand what it is we were collectively creating. We had to try and see things through each other’s eyes – develop a sort of artistic empathy.

After nine months and several workshop performances, The Snow Queen was ready for its first full-length debut. We were exhausted from clashing but even more excited about the project. Something truly beautiful had come from our labors and the show opened to enthusiastic audiences in January 2000. It turned out to be a good step forward in our careers, opening professional doors for all of us. The meticulously constructed and finely tuned score caught the ear of pianist-composer-record executive Lincoln Mayorga, and the CD was released on his label, TownHall Records, last July. There is even talk of mounting the whole show on an even bigger scale next year – the next step in our goal of finding it a home off-Broadway.

Even more valuable than the professional boost was the way the whole project expanded my vision as a composer. By composing music side-by-side with choreography for so long and intense a period, I was forced to understand the project not as choreography set to music or music set to choreography, but rather as something fully encompassing the two. The spatial consequences of the music and the auditory consequences of dance helped me see composing from a slightly more objective perspective: that of an artist creating art.

So to anyone who hasn’t had the chance to collaborate with artists of other disciplines, find the right choreographer, filmmaker, visual artist, poet, librettist, or other creative artist, and it just might expand your horizons as a composer. The full rewards of collaboration cannot be truly told, but must be experienced.

 

Composer John LaSala blends electronic and acoustic sounds, creating music in the dangerous void between "artsy-fartsy" and "tunefully accessible." He’s also a freelance digital-audio engineer and music copyist. LaSala has been a member of the Forum’s New York Chapter for more than two years.  For more information on The Snow Queen or to order the CD, visit www.snowqueen.homepage.com or call (718) 630-5664.