May 14, 2009
Leaf blowers and lawn mowers? Paul Moore’s music for dance Concert is decidedly out-of-the-box
When two graduate students in dance were contemplating music for their creations in the MFA/Faculty Dance Concert next week, they turned to the guy who’s been accompanying their dance classes ever since they arrived at the UW.
Paul Matthew Moore, the Dance Program’s music director, has composed the music for Ich Bin Gleich Fertig by Catherine Cabeen and “Rite of Spring” (the quotation marks are for commentary, not for grammar) by Tonya Lockyer — just two of the pieces in the concert, which is slated for May 21-24 in Meany Studio Theatre.
“I have always been inspired by the music he creates for our classes,” Cabeen said of Moore. “He weaves in melodies that we know to variations of his own and creates a sonic environment that is both supportive in its familiarity and surprisingly spontaneous.”
As music director, it’s Moore’s job to provide music for the dance classes the program offers. Usually that’s on a piano, although sometimes he plays percussion instruments, and usually it’s improvisational.
“I have a repertoire of music I know, and if one of those pieces is appropriate I’ll play it,” Moore said. “Otherwise I’ll just make something up. Then the challenge is remembering it if I need to reproduce it for the next class.”
Watching him in class is an interesting experience. The teacher talks to the students a bit, then simply turns to Moore, who automatically begins to play while the students dance. Communication between teacher and accompanist is short on words, long on understanding.
“With the great faculty we have here, their movement is clear enough and their description of it to the dancers is clear enough that I know what the appropriate tempo and meter is,” Moore said.
He takes it from there. But then, Moore has been a composer for a long time and a musician for longer than that. He started guitar lessons at 9, turned to the piano two years later and went on to pick up a degree in music composition from the University of California Santa Barbara.
“I think I’ve always known I wanted to be a musician and write music,” Moore said. “I just stayed on the path till today.”
His first experience playing for dancers was as an undergraduate, when he got a job as accompanist in a modern dance class. The job had called for an improvising musician, so Moore sat down and began playing the arrhythmic, atonal music that dominated the music department he came from.
“And the teacher right away said, ‘Don’t do that.’ I realized then that dance teachers don’t like atonal, arrhythmic music,” Moore said.
Which isn’t to say that only traditional music will do. Moore said the teachers in the UW Dance Program “accept my out-of-the-box ideas and let me develop my voice as an improviser in the classroom.”
His music for Lockyer’s dance certainly is an out-of-the-box idea. She wanted to riff on Nijinsky’s famous choreography for Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring), a dance that was shocking enough to cause a riot at its 1913 premiere. Lockyer discovered in her research on the dance that there have been more than 200 versions of it since then, so she incorporated ideas from some of those versions in creating her own take on it.
“I asked Paul to collaborate with me because I’ve admired his work for a long time, even before I came to the MFA program,” Lockyer said.
His response: a piece incorporating the sounds of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, weed whackers and other nontraditional “instruments.” It’s the “Rite of Spring.” Get it?
Just as Nijinsky’s choreography was considered shocking at the time, so, Moore explains, “What I’m doing is playing around with what would be shocking to hear.”
But that’s only for the brief opening of the dance. “Other sections have humor and nuance, and there is even a beautiful, melodic viola section,” Lockyer said. “In fact, many have commented that the music and movement of the final solo are very beautiful and poignant.”
Cabeen’s piece is completely different. The title translates as I’ll be Ready Soon and/or I Will Collapse Soon, and deals with the identities people wear in the course of their lives.
“I approached [Moore] with the idea right after the winter break,” Cabeen said. “We had a few conversations about style/content and I gave him a CD of the kind of sounds/ music my movement quality stems from. Then we worked separately for several weeks. I created sections of choreography and he created sections of music that mostly looped. Then when I structured my choreography I timed each section and sent him an outline.”
Moore said he’s used elements of rhythm and blues and hip hop for this piece.
Both choreographers said they were pleased with the music Moore has created and are happy with the overall process. “Working with Paul on this dance has been a total delight,” Lockyer said.
When he’s not working at the Dance Program, where he’s been music director since 1995, Moore composes scores for films. One of his recent gigs, for example, was on a documentary called Zoo, which tells the bizarre story of a Northwest man who died after having sex with a horse.
But he said he’s thrilled to have a job in music that doesn’t involve working nights or being on the road. “Sometimes I’ll be on my way to work and I’ll just think to myself, ‘I’m on my way to play piano and watch people dance to my music,’ and I get giddy at the thought of it. It’s such a good thing.”
Besides Lockyer and Cabeen’s dances, the concert features work by faculty members Jennifer Salk and Jurg Koch and graduate students Louis Gervais, Jamie Hall, Matthew Henley and Elizabeth Lentz.
The concert is at 7:30 p.m. May 21-23 and 2 p.m. May 24 in Meany Studio Theare. Tickets are $14 general, $12 faculty, staff and alumni association members and $10 for students and seniors. They are available at the Arts Ticket Office, 206-543-4880 or online at meany.org.
