On the Edges of Music: Trisha
BrownÕs Set and Reset and Twelve
Ton Rose[1]
July 2006 version
ItÕs not about how it feels to me, it's about wouldn't this be interesting, wouldn't it be beautiful, wouldn't it be curious if they did this?[2]
In the realm of American concert dance, the discussion of dance and music interactions tends to focus on opposites: George BalanchineÕs ballets to music by Igor Stravinsky versus Merce CunninghamÕs dances with music of John Cage. In BalanchineÕs works, which accord with ballet tradition, dance and music are closely related;[3] in CunninghamÕs works, dance and music are independent entities existing simultaneously.[4] Exploring the area delineated by these two approaches, Trisha BrownÕs dances evince an eclectic relationship to music that is neither as close as BalanchineÕs nor as independent as CunninghamÕs. This essay examines the relationship between dance and music in two of her works: Set and Reset (1983), to which composer Laurie Anderson set Long Time No See; and Twelve Ton Rose (1996), a choreographic treatment of two pieces by Anton Webern.
Cracks
in an Eggshell
Trisha BrownÕs name and choreography do not generally bring to mind musical accompaniment, yet in the last dozen years she has choreographed to Claudio Monteverdi (the opera L'Orfeo), Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert (Winterreise), John Cage, Salvatore Sciarinno, jazz by Dave Douglas, and movement-interactive sound by Curtis Bahn.[5] The delay in her reputationÕs acquiring an association with music stems from her earlier long tenure making dances in silence. Brown first attracted notice as part of a group of young choreographers, the Judson Dance Theater, exploring the limits of modern dance in ManhattanÕs Judson Memorial Church in the early 1960s. Developing out of a dance composition course taught by Merce Cunningham accompanist Robert Ellis Dunn, building on ideas of John Cage, the Judson Dance Theater notably rebelled against prevailing practices of dance making, including traditional uses of music.[6] While Brown has reincorporated music and other accustomed features into her dances, certain elements of a personal choreographic style continue relatively unchanged.[7] From the beginning BrownÕs work has been characterized by a vocabulary that includes unusual, quirky, slippery and improvisational-like movement, set within oftentimes severely restrictive formal schemes. She or her dancers have walked on the sides of buildings,[8] used the thumb as a primary motif maker,[9] and engaged in intricate partnering and lifts.[10] Her compositional frameworks have included sequential accumulation (aababcabcdÉ),[11] indeterminate works such as one in which one dancer may instruct another on what material to dance,[12] and a piece in which the dancer always has her back to the audience.[13] BrownÕs dances are simultaneously cerebral and sensual, challenging and yet full of dry witty humor. As Joyce Morgenroth observes, Òher loose-limbed, sequential movements play elusively against her formal explorations.Ó[14]
Before 1979, Brown presented her work outside, in museums, or in other non-conventional spaces, largely without music. But then, as Marcia Siegel remarks, ÒTrisha Brown entered the dance business,Ó[15] moving to proscenium stages with lighting, scenery, costumes—and music. In new circumstances Brown further developed her movement ideas, which Siegel notes resulted in Òa movement style that others could share. Inevitably, it was based on her own highly articulate, fluid dancing.Ó[16] This fluidity perhaps reaches its apogee in Set and Reset, a work of continuous motion and amazing interchanges. Each dancerÕs bouncy, agitated flow of motion feeds into configurations that form and re-form seemingly at random. One of a series of dances that Brown calls her ÒUnstable Molecular StructureÓ cycle,[17] Set and Reset shows off remarkable partnering, seemingly facile yet sprinkled with lifts requiring perfect coordination.[18] As noted by Arlene Croce, ÒPeople would be yanked out of the air as they leaped, or their momentum would be suddenly stopped by a catcher who hadnÕt noticeably prepared the catch.Ó[19]
The arbitrariness of the startling moments contributes to the surprise and wonder that a viewer feels watching the dance, yet it also runs the risk of making Set and Reset difficult to grasp. Thomas McEvilley notices that, ÒThere is little sense of beginning, middle, or end, few if any implications of drama.Ó[20] The shape of the piece slips from comprehension, even though the moment-to-moment details of the choreography are a constant joy. But beneath the surface there is a structure. Brown
made a very long phrase that circumnavigated the outside edge of the stage, serving as a conveyor belt to deliver duets, trios, and solos into the center of the stage. All of the dancers were taught the phrase and given the following set of five instructions: 1. Keep it simple. (The clarity issue.) 2. Play with visibility and invisibility. (The privacy issue.) 3. If you don't know what to do, get in line. (Helping out with downtime.) 4. Stay on the outside edge of the stage. (The spatial issue.) 5. Act on instinct. (The wild card.)[21]
Brown based the dance on her dancersÕ structured extemporizations, creating it out of the collisions and combinations of her fundamental material. Choreographing consisted of the company incrementally advancing the work through short improvisations, each in turn being set and used as the starting point for the next, in an iterative process of assemblage.[22] Each dancer had permission to perform any part of BrownÕs elemental phrase at any time, which contributed to movement recurring throughout the dance.[23] Marianne Goldberg clarifies that Ò[d]uos, trios, or the entire group initiate phrases that others pick up across stage, then echo or alter unexpectedly, none more central than the other.Ó[24] Brown's underlining of phrases by unisons and symmetries makes more perceptible the supple, swingy movement that streams by almost too quickly to be captured by the eye. The resulting subgroupings, such as a unison duet that is part of a trio, help modify and articulate larger groupings of dancers, and create changing pairings that complicate the already unsettled formations on the dance floor. Thus, as McEvilley puts it, ÒMovements fragment and cross.Ó[25] Goldberg describes Set and Reset as Òcomposed with an allover, field like composition and no single stage focus.Ó[26]
Like a late Jackson Pollock painting, Set and Reset rewards viewers with an immediate experience of gratifying and lively intensity, but the question remains as to whether we can resolve the mass of action into a picture we can understand, or are satisfied with enjoying its overall effect. The solos, duets, trios, and so on up to sextets, which overlap to varying degrees, last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. Sometimes many pass by in quick succession, and sometimes one will last for a while but collide or join with an extra dancer or ensemble. Goldberg argues that the Òsections of changing dynamic quality [are] so condensed in time that they [are] enveloped within the monotone of passing activity.Ó[27] But Brown sees Òmarked changes within the danceÓ[28] and repeated viewings bear her out. Her fluctuating configurations effect a compositional structure like a cracked eggshell; the temporal sections diverge widely in size—some very small, some quite large—and they may combine together to form regions even though there are tiny cracks between them. Additionally, the cracks themselves fluctuate in depth, some being small fractures while others are almost completely broken.
Layered
Fragments
The music Long Time No See spans almost twenty minutes with an ever-clanging fire bell blended into a modulating mixture of other elements. A seventeen-and-a-half beat percussion loop consisting of synthesized snare and bass drums is occasionally supported by electric bass and keyboard reinforcement. Noises such as cracks, bells, breaking dishes, buzzes, hisses, and beeps pervade the music's textures. And melodic fragments for assorted synthesizer settings and AndersonÕs distorted voice wander throughout the piece. As the loops are not immediately apparent and the harmony remains static and nonfunctional, it is the diverse combinations of layered elements that distinguish one section of the music from another. The music's shape reflects that of the dance, forming another broken eggshell. This is not surprising given that the music was made to fit the dance.
Anderson worked closely with Brown in composing the music.[29] Brown says that
I would send a tape to Laurie every three or four days when we completed a section of the dance. She would put it on her monitor in her sound studio and watch it while she worked with different mixes. She wrote the music with a very tight fit to the detail of the dance, down to a gesture of the wrist, a hand flipping over, a subtlety of a larger movement. There are certain basic things that we agreed upon—that the music does not have to underwrite the dance. If you see it you don't have to hear it too.[30]
Notice that Brown does not consider
a Òtight fitÓ to imply a one to one correspondence between what we see and what
we hear. Instead the connections are as ephemeral as the dance and in constant
flux. Brown allows that cross-relations between music and dance may be hand in
glove, Òor notÓ:
A clang is constant throughout, so is the lyric ÔLong Time No See,Õ along with instrumentation and sound effects that fit the dance like a gauntlet to a hand, or not. There are wry correspondences between music and dance, the sound of plates breaking at the moment dancers collide, an embellished reference to the impact, but also to the phrase itself, which was fragmented by the uncanny overlay of gesture and improvisational high jinks now memorized.[31]
Here Brown maps out three sorts of
material in the music: that which is constant, that which corresponds directly
with simultaneous dance material, and that which refers to the dance movement
through having similar qualities such as being fragmented. The music also
transforms over time in relation to the progression of the dance, and it is
these transformations which gradually emerge upon a closer look at AndersonÕs
work.
We
start with the pulse itself. Almost all reviewers comment on the music's
incessant bell ringing away at 232 bpm: Òthe annoying but hypnotic sound of
Laurie Anderson's alarm-bell and Beulah-the-buzzer and newsreel voice-over
score,Ó[32]
ÒAnderson's tape loop repeats its insistent dinner-gonging. The compound effect
could be maddening but instead it's trance-inducing,Ó[33]
Ò[t]he ragalike music, its beat marked by the clanging of a fire bell, added to
the urgency and breathlessness of the dancing.Ó[34]
The clanging begins less than ten seconds after the music starts and continues
to the very end. The pulse is too fast for most of us to take as the primary
beat; instead it feels like a duple beat at 116 bpm, which is what ÒbeatÓ will
refer to throughout this paper. But is there any higher level metrical
organization to the music?
In
the quotes above, one reviewer, Jenny Gilbert, calls the music a Òtape loopÓ
and she is to some extent correct. There is a seventeen-and-a-half-beat
percussion cycle that is present through most of the piece; additionally there
is sometimes an equally long bass-and-keyboard-accompaniment cycle. (The
keyboard rhythm part always appears with the bass line so that they act as a
single unit.) When both the percussion cycle and the bass-and-accompaniment
cycle are playing they are always in phase with each other the same way, never
placed such that the first beat of one occurs with anything other than the
first beat of the other (Example 1). These cycles combine into thirty-five-beat
cycles[35]
that divide audibly (if one listens carefully and counts) most of the work.
Furthermore, the thirty-five-beat division extends temporally beyond the areas
where the percussion cycle or bass-and-accompaniment cycle are audible to the
beginning of the work (where the opening vocal phrase ÒLong Time No SeeÓ ends
on the first downbeat of a cycle) and to the end of the work (where the bell
clangs its last duple on, once again, the downbeat of a cycle). The
thirty-five-beat cycles fail only twice: a small stretch appears late in the
piece from 16:52 to 17:17 where one cycle seems to be pulled apart with twelve
additional beats placed inside, and a major break occurs a third of the way
through the work, from 6:55 to 8:28, where the thirty-five-beat cycles
disappear, replaced by more traditional eight-beat cycles. Thus the cycles
divide the dance into four parts: the first part defined by the presence of
thirty-five-beat cycles, the second by the presence of eight-beat cycles, the
third coinciding with thirty-five-beat cycles again, and after a twelve-beat
hitch, the fourth based again on the last run of thirty-five-beat cycles.
However,
it is doubtful that any audience member is aware of this, except perhaps for
noticing a change in texture in part two, for Anderson disguises this rhythmic
structure in numerous ways. Musical events often are placed slightly off the
pulse, sometimes making the pulse difficult to hear. Additionally, the beat (consisting
of two pulses) is ambiguous with regard to which pulse is the downbeat and
which the upbeat. The seventeen-and-a-half beat percussion cycles operating in
a duple beat context of course tend to favor equally both pulses within a beat.
That one pulse is slightly more emphasized than the other is only determinable
over a long stretch of music by the occasional entrances of material that place
more weight on one pulse than the other. However, from 3:12 to 5:03, the fire
bell provides the only sense of pulse, and to determine the beat one has little
choice other than to follow oneÕs feeling that it is far easier to hear the
beat being here rather than there. Elsewhere the fire bell may slightly emphasize the upbeat
rather than the downbeat, but other simultaneous material overrides this
emphasis and provides reason for hearing the bell as accenting the offbeat.
Even
at the level of the cycles themselves there is no or little stress on the
beginning or any other point of the cycles. The 35-beat percussion cycle
contains almost half a dozen beats of silence in the middle of each
seventeen-and-a-half beat sub cycle, and the length of the pattern and its
prolonged rests inhibit the discovery of its regularity. Furthermore Anderson
begins her melodies above the percussion at myriad points in the cycle so that
little sense of return occurs as the cycle repeats. Hence no feeling of meter
is ever established, except in the part of the music with the eight-beat cycle,
part two above. The bass-and-accompaniment cycle is similarly ambiguous with
the bass seemingly falling on f or g almost randomly and the duration and odd
count of the cycle being enough to obscure its consistency unless someone
listens for it.
Ultimately
it is not the cycle organization that shapes the music, but the musicÕs density
and its relationship with the dance. The density is determined by layering,
which itself draws the music and dance together. As McEvilley notes,
ÒAnderson's work (Long Time No See)
shared a certain conceptual ground with Brown's choreography in its structure
of layered fragments...Ó[36]
Fragments
of what? On top of the basic elements of clang, bass drum, snare, bass, and
keyboard, are additional ones that roughly divide into three categories that
blend into each other: extra percussion; recorded, distorted, or synthesized
sounds; and melodic bits and pieces. In the first category are cracks, bumps,
woodblocks, bells, and sounds such as dishes falling or breaking and crashes
and collisions of glass-like and metallic objects. In the second category are
buzzes, winds, things rolling, engines, guitar strings, synthesized hisses, the
warning beeps of vehicles backing up, and barely (if that) understood voices.
Many of these sounds repeat regularly for a few seconds but usually in loop
durations unrelated to the seventeen-and-a-half-beat percussion cycle. Perhaps
the most prominent such loop occurs for more than a minute and a half at the
end of the work; distorted shouts of what sounds like ÒHello! ... Hurryup! ...
H---!Ó repeat approximately every 16 and a quarter beats, a typical instance of
material that doesn't fall exactly onto the basic pulse but is temporally
Òsmudged.Ó
The
ÒsoundsÓ category, especially its vocal subcategory, merges into the ÒmelodiesÓ
category (the third category above) in that some of the ÒmelodiesÓ consist of
distorted and repeated speech, perhaps best exemplified by the title phrase,
ÒLong Time No See.Ó Anderson commences Long Time No See by speaking the phrase with a high-degree of
sing-songiness, i.e. pitch-content, and she immediately starts distorting it
simply through fragmentation and repetition. She also distorts the individual
words by raising or lowering their frequencies (electronically) such that they
may be used as melodic pitches. Other examples of modified spoken material include
samples of processed vocals that sound like Òin-in-inoÓ and Òa-mor.Ó
Not
all the melodies are voice-based; in fact, most sound like fairly typical
keyboard synthesizer settings. The melodic fragments in a given section are
limited in range, sometimes to as few as four notes, and vary through small
changes in rhythm and permutations of note order (see Example 2). These
fragments help define sections of the music through timbre. There is the full
bass synth melody, the reedy parallel thirds melody, the panpipes section, and
the high fluty fragments.
This
is a good place to mention another aspect of the music that contributes to
reviewers' remarks about ÒhypnoticÓ and Òtrance-inducing.Ó The harmony is very
static. The melodies noodle in the key of G with practically no functional
harmony at all, except perhaps for a single lone vocal scale fragment that
hints at a dominant function (d-e-f#-g-g#-a-d ending at 16:49 with the sung
nonsense word ÒinohootÓ). On the other hand there are modal changes. Primarily
the mode is an ambiguous Dorian or Minor, ambiguous because the sixth note of
the scale is avoided except for a single e-flat at 9:19. The reedy parallel
thirds from 12:36 to 14:50 and from 17:22 to 18:27 circle in Mixolydian mode,
and a sort of ÒpanpipesÓ layer of melody from 4:37 to 5:30 warps out of tune,
but these sections function as color, not as harmonic progression. The modal
ambiguity remains to the very end, as the final melodic section of Long Time
No See juxtaposes the Mixolydian parallel
thirds against the original tune accompanying the words ÒLong Time No See,Ó a
tune limited to simply f, g, c, and a crucial b-flat that clashes with the
Mixolydian modeÕs b-natural.
Indeed,
this mixing of disparate scales is another instance of the assembling and
disbanding of materials that provides temporal shape to the music. Instead of
the loop cycles, or the harmony, it is the dissimilar combinations of these
layered elements that allow one section of music to stand out from another.
While the dance fractures into ensembles of dancers, the music breaks up into
ensembles of sounds, loops, and melodic fragments. The music and dance divide
into parts in their individual ways (see Table 1), but they come together at a
number of key points, at least in the most widely available video recording, Set
and Reset: Version I.[37]
Fault
Lines
Consider again the broken eggshell as model for how Set and Reset is put together. What constitutes the pieces of the eggshell? For both dance and music, it is the extremes of density and duration that stand out. Most noticeable are sextets and solos, full music and empty music, and dancer groupings and sound layers of extended duration. But sections such as these may be reached through incremental steps, so that they are difficult to define as sections differentiated from the sections around them. However, there are key points where dance and music make relatively large changes in tandem, creating not so much sections of the work, but fault lines where the eggshell is cracked most deeply.
The
musical layer that most contributes to the fault lines is the bass with
keyboard accompaniment. When present, it gives the music rhythmic ÒoomphÓ that
can either energize the visual scene or overpower more subtle rhythm in the
dance. Anderson uses this layer three times in the dance, and each time it
interacts with the choreography differently. In the first case, the bass line's
presence coincides with the temporal edges of a sextet from 5:14 to 5:48. This
sextet appears immediately after a long duet that starts at 3:11, two minutes
of unison and symmetry occasionally paired with a third dancer in counterpoint.
The succession from duet to sextet noticeably transforms the texture of the
dance. Preparing this change, the music grows relatively quickly; a number of
sound layers rapidly pile up in the fifteen seconds preceding the sextet,
culminating in the introduction of the bass and keyboard accompaniment. The end
of the danced sextet mirrors the beginning; musical layers disappear as a
succeeding trio replaces the foregoing material. Anderson is here matching
visual density with musical density, creating a well-defined time region of the
dance, a whole piece of the eggshell.
Prepared somewhat differently and almost entirely via the music, a second climax results not in an emphasized section but in an emphasized break. There is a very long unison dance duet that ends just past the midpoint of Set and Reset. Beginning at 7:22 in the middle of the quietest music section with no musical support, the dance duet—over the course of three minutes—stubbornly continues along unperturbed by what amounts to a long musical crescendo as sound layers, including the bass and keyboard accompaniment, accumulate and vary. But most of these layers suddenly disappear just as the duet ends at 10:12, thus exposing and amplifying the rift between two regions of the dance. This rift is further marked by a striking dancer collision that repeats near the very end of the dance, generating an additional structural link.
One more interesting fault line occurs at 14:24 near the three-quarters point of Set and Reset. It is the entrance of the longest trio in the dance, succeeding the compositional decay of a sextet where the dancers repeatedly return to a line, center stage and perpendicular to the audience. This ÒlineÓ sextet has a clear beginning at 12:22 that the music does not acknowledge, and during its two-minute duration the music gathers, not quickly as in the first example, but like the case of the second example where the music slowly thickens over the sextet's course. The trio's entrance creates a choreographic boundary and coincides with the entrance of the music's important bass layer (and its rhythmic accentuation) just as a melody disappears. Here the entrance of the bass marks the fault line, while the previous exampleÕs accentuation derived from its exit. The trio itself is a prominent movement section that maintains a relatively constant character, but the music drops out thirty seconds into it. So while music and dance do not maintain a constant matrimony during either the sextet or the trio, their joint, abrupt modifications propose a fault line that makes visible the regions on either side. It is because music and dance do not generally shift in concert that such coordination becomes significant.
With a cracked eggshell there is no point at which analysis naturally stops. One can always find shallower and shallower breaks, smaller and smaller sections. But this metaphor captures an important aspect of Set and Reset: there is not a clear hierarchy of relationships but instead a fragmented continuum of structural levels, each barely distinguishable from its neighbors. However, the situation is somewhat different in Twelve Ton Rose because the cracks in the musical plane are sometimes complete: there are separate movements disconnected by silence.
Complementing
the Music
Like its music, the dance Twelve Ton Rose presents an austere experience far removed from the kinetic environments of Long Time No See and Set and Reset. Brown choreographed the twenty-five minute Twelve Ton Rose to Webern's Five Movements for string quartet, Op. 5; and to the three-movement String Quartet, Op. 28.[38] It must be said that Webern's music is problematical for many listeners because of its dissonance and atonality.[39] But a sympathetic response, at least regarding Op. 5, is offered by music theorist Robert Morgan, who writes, ÒThe individual movements [...] each a tiny jewel unlike anything heard before, are intimate expressions of pure lyricism, fleeting musical visions.Ó[40] The dynamic extremes and energy of the first and third movements are hard for a choreographer to ignore, but the other movements are slow, quiet, and meditative. As for the ascetic and serial Op. 28, in a good performance[41] the tempo changes, rubato, and dynamics give the listener a sense that the music is constantly pausing and re-gathering its energy, and with great intonation even the harshest dissonances attain a sweetness that calls attention to the sounds themselves, bringing Webern very close to entering the world of John Cage and Morton Feldman.
Brown's choreography offers an enigmatic fleetingness not unlike that of Op. 5. As described by Deborah Jowitt, ÒBrown matches Webern's minimalism--the bursts of sound embedded in silence--with her own form of austerity. Rarely are more than a few dancers onstage at the same time. Sometimes they hover at the edges or step into view, accomplish something, and disappear. They walk, regroup, wait. In a line they rush across the stage, absorbing or disgorging individuals.Ó[42] Edith Boxberger attributes to Brown the comment that Òthis music sounds like the way I think when I'm creating movement. ... It's unexpected, it has a dissonance that wavers, is unpredictable.Ó[43] Even so, the movement and music are not in parallel (see Table 2 for a basic map). The dance[44] is divided into movement sections which are not always coextensive with music sections, and movement dynamics are usually contrasting with or unrelated to musical dynamics.
For example, the opening dance section describes a long arc of activity, as one by one dancers periodically enter and exit, their numbers gradually advancing and then slowly receding to nothing. The arc covers most of the first two music movements, and Brown choreographs right through the silence between them, emphasizing the silence by opposing it to a maximal number of dancers on stage. And while in Op. 5/i the intense music confronts BrownÕs relatively quiet choreography, the subtle, second musical movement faces more active, lively dancing.
Later
on, the choreography to the muted Op. 5/v is often a churning canon. At one
point the stage divides into two groups which seem to be reverse trios
symmetric about the center point of the stage, and the choreography embodies an
almost kaleidoscopic geometry, or, given that the dancers are all in red, an
opening and closing rose.[45]
This ÒroseÓ sequence corresponds to the only loud point of Op. 5/v.[46]
All this dense, pulsating activity occurs against slow, hushed music.
The symmetry of BrownÕs choreography in Op. 5/v anticipates the multi-level symmetries grounded in the twelve tone row[47] of WebernÕs Op. 28 music, and though Brown does not use serial procedures to choreograph, she pays homage to WebernÕs serial technique in the pun of her title, Twelve Ton Rose. Furthermore, Brown shares certain affinities with WebernÕs compositional practice. Composer Elliott Carter remarks that Ò[i]n many cases the row seems to be a kind of secret formula barely audible in the music.Ó[48] This is exactly what Brown turns to in Op. 28/i: a secret formula to complement the music note by note. Invisibly entwined with the music, the dance quartet during this movement perfectly reciprocates the interplay of rhythm among the musicians. Deborah Jowitt reports that the dancers, Òsharing the same steps but each keyed to a different instrument, move only when their instrument falls silent;Ó[49] Brown says they move Òin the negative spaces of the music.Ó[50] As she recalls when interviewed by Edith Boxberger, ÒIn opus 28 I made the attempt of executing a phrase alternating with the vocal line. The result is a rigorous involvement with the music that one canÕt see because to a certain extent it takes place in the shadow of the music.Ó[51]
One
last example of complementarity is in Op. 28/ii. Divided into three long
phrases, each of which corresponds to one section of the musicÕs ABA form, the
womanÕs solo in Op. 28/ii counters the unstable clock-like rhythm in the music with
smooth alternations between extreme slowness and speed in the movement. In each
section the dance phrase tends to start slowly with continuous acceleration,
then gradually slows down to near stillness, though there may be hiccups along
the way.
Brown's preference seems to be to contrast with the music, to make invisible and displaced connections, and furthermore to play around the edges of the music, an idea worth exploring in a little more detail, looking at both Set and Reset and Twelve Ton Rose.
Playing
with Edges
Before Brown began presenting her work on proscenium stages, she put dances in unconventional spaces; since then she has often put dances unconventionally in conventional spaces, extending the area that the audience must survey. Marianne Goldberg points out that ÒBrown often places crucial choreography at the stage margins;Ó and that in Set and Reset ÒBrown plays with the edge of the stage, finding innumerable ways to undermine it as a frame.Ó[52] In a live performance of Set and Reset the dancers extend the stage whenever they exit because the curtains are translucent—they are still seen by the audience and continue to perform partially concealed.
Likewise, in Twelve Ton Rose Brown also subverts the borders of the stage, playing with the wings so they cut motion and bodies partially from audience perspective. Brown half-hides nearly still dancers by placing them so they are dissected by a wing, and she choreographs dancers entering from or exiting to the wings while in unison with a dancer already on or staying on stage—Brown thus implies that the movement continues out of view.
And Brown challenges the constraints of music as well as the constraints of space, questioning the traditional framing property of music. A live performance of Set and Reset includes what seems like a separate preceding film projected on a Robert Rauschenberg sculpture. Arlene Croce quips, Ò[O]ne saw a technologically impressive video installation by Rauschenberg and then one saw a pleasant concert of dance.Ó[53] As Brown describes it, Rauschenberg's structure rises and Ò[a]n amber light picks up Diane [Madden] 'Walking on the (backstage) Wall,' handheld by four dancers with outstretched arms, her feet to the brick, the crown of her head to the audience.Ó[54] It is only after this that the major part of the dance, to Anderson's music, begins; the work Set and Reset begins long before the music Long Time No See does.
Brown reverses the situation in Twelve Ton Rose, starting the music in darkness and not bringing up the lights on the (already moving) dancers until twenty-five seconds later. But Brown retrieves that time from the music by filling all of the silences with dance. As mentioned above, Brown packs choreography into the gap between Op. 5/i and Op. 5/ii. Then, as the dance moves to Op. 5/iii, Brown completely turns the tables on the music and uses the dance to temporally and physically frame the musicÕs third movement as follows. Op. 5/ii ends with three women dancing in silence; when a man runs on stage they move to the periphery and take still shapes as Op. 5/iii begins. The women are still for the duration of the quick and short Op. 5/iii while the man dances, surprisingly, to the music. Afterwards they move in retrograde back to their previous positions and the man backs off the stage. Op. 5/iii has been symmetrically book ended in time by a movement phrase and its retrograde. The male dancer and his music have been surrounded in space by the female dancers of the silences.
In later inter-movement silences Brown sets up what she calls a Òwindshield wiperÓ motif for the last movement.[55] Dancers are not arranged in lines in Twelve Ton Rose until very briefly during Op. 5/v. Then they begin and end Op. 28/i in lines perpendicular to the audience. Finally, after the end of Op. 28/ii the soloist begins to walk off, and is literally swept off her feet by a line of dancers running across stage from right to left. The dancers walk back on to begin the third movement in line, and now the line becomes an important theme in Op. 28/iii, no longer perpendicular to the audience but rotating and rushing around the stage.
At the end of Op. 28, the choreography continues for a few seconds after the music ends. One last time a musical edge is a site for elaboration. Where in Set and Reset the fine network of eggshell cracks defined jointly by dance and music helps articulate what Goldberg calls Òthe monotone of passing activity,Ó[56] in Twelve Ton Rose the deep and gaping musical edges function in an opposing manner, providing a simple block foundation which Brown complicates, thus increasing the intricacy of the framework that the music provides the dance.
Space
for Play
Brown's manipulation of musical edges, her tendency to complement the music, as well as her choices of music in the first place, all bring up the question of how music and dance work together in general. It is possible to place the functioning of music with dance into musicologist Leonard Meyer's psychological framework for music analysis. When we listen to music, we are evaluating how sounds are related and building a model in our minds of what the music is.[57] The structure of information in the music, which is created by constraints, correlations, and redundancies, heavily influences our evaluation process.[58] When we recognize a connection, a stylistic marker like a cadence, or an extra-musical reference, we add this information to our mental model and adjust the model to reflect our new understanding. Furthermore, we extrapolate, seeing implications in our model and forming expectations about upcoming music. Music that creates expectations or goals—where one event implies a succeeding event—is called ÒlinearÓ[59] or Òteleological.Ó[60] One example of linearity is the way in which the leading tone implies the tonic in tonal music. Another example is how in the second time through a repeated section of music there is an implication that the section will likely be repeated to its conclusion. In both examples, composers may fulfill or frustrate expectations.
According
to music theorist Jonathan D. Kramer, music where linearity has broken down is
called Òvertical.Ó[61]
In vertical music listeners abandon their constant evaluation of relationships
and can only listen to the sensuousness of sound. Linearity may break down because
we are unable to hear many relationships between musical events (as in John
Cage's music), or it may break down because the relationships are so
predictable that we take them for granted (as can happen in the music of Philip
Glass). In the first case, we have aleatoric music: minimal redundancy and
randomness. In the second case, we have minimalist music: maximal redundancy
and predictability. Most music has both linear and vertical qualities.[62]
Linearity
tends to supersede verticality; this occurs in combinations of text and music,
as in opera and song. As Meyer observes, Ò[T]exts with a narrative message tend
to be coupled with highly redundant music so that the story can be easily
followed [...] conversely, when music is of prime importance, verbal
information tends to be redundant.Ó[63]
Similarly, Brown pairs vertical music with complex dance so that the dance can
be easily followed.
Certainly Long Time No See is highly redundant music, with little or no sense of temporal progression. Its sound layering projects a sense of rising and falling, but the resultant changing density and quality of texture is perhaps the only dimension of this music that occasionally sounds like a goal-oriented movement. Thus Long Time No See is more vertical than linear.[64] Brown appreciates exactly the openness of Anderson's design, saying that Ò[i]t is possible to be rhythmically complex within that ground base.Ó[65]
As
for the Webern, Op. 5 is highly gestural with phrases chiseled strongly by
rhythm, dynamics, and texture. But the five movements differ in degree of
linearity; while the first and third movements drive towards their conclusions,
the other movements settle in contemplation, contributing much more to mood and
atmosphere than to a sense of forward motion, and thus taking on the quality of
vertical music. As a result, they provide Brown as much space Òto be
rhythmically complexÓ as Long Time No See,
and her treatment of Op. 5 reflects this. While she somewhat avoids the first
movement, sneaking the dance in behind it, and adopts the traditional framework
of the dancer dancing to the music for the third movement, Brown places her
most dynamic dancing in the second, fourth, and fifth movements.
Op. 28 is perhaps most interesting of all, because appreciating almost any serial organization demands, at minimum, extremely close attention on the listenerÕs part. But Webern further challenges oneÕs ability to hear his rows through the use of contrapuntal techniques that complicate the earÕs analytical endeavor. Michael Russ argues that Webern Òconstructs canons that may be difficult [...] to perceiveÓ by obscuring them Òthrough changes in contour, texture and instrumental pointillism.Ó[66] By hiding the secret formula, the Rosetta stone, the composer intimates that one can appreciate his music without necessarily understanding it. For such a listener, no syntactical information from the serial procedures is available, and a perception of randomness is avoided only through apprehending how the dynamics shape each movement. Moreover, as Meyer argues, even if one were to grasp each and every nuance of WebernÕs scores, his stylistic approach Òweakens the listenerÕs sense of goal-directed motionÓ and has a Òtendency toward non-functionalism.Ó[67] Thus in any event, Op. 28 has at most a weak linearity. Like the slow Op. 5 movements, the Op. 28 movements by no means bar Brown from shaping time as she sees fit. While the choreography tracks the rhythmic contours of the music in the first movement, it detours from them in the second and third.
In Set and Reset and Twelve Ton Rose Brown uses music with a prominent vertical dimension: minimalist music, slow atmospheric music, and dense polyphonic serial music.[68] Calling such music decorative acknowledges how it functions with dance when the audienceÕs attention is directed to the visual. The question of whether or not the musicÕs underlying structures can or should be perceived can likewise be asked of BrownÕs choreography.[69] As Goldberg points out, Ò[i]n BrownÕs earlier work, the audienceÕs job seems to be to decipher the rules of the [choreographic] score. In her later work the scores are so complex they are almost impossible to discern.Ó[70]
The complexity of BrownÕs scores is matched by the complexity of her relationship with music. Like Balanchine, Brown works primarily with structure; she does not usually work with pulse.[71] Her parallel structures more often complement the music than harmonize with it. As in CunninghamÕs works, music provides emotional space and duration; the dancers generally do not dance to the music. Brown, however, often acknowledges the music by playing around its edges, moving fleetingly with and against it. Balanchine and Cunningham maintain a kind of pureness in their treatment of music: the former integrates dance and music as much as possible; the latter renders them as distinct as possible. Brown eclectically varies and blends her creative methods, situating herself between these two twentieth-century innovators, drawing from both and placing them in conversation.