Title: Matryoshka, subsequently retitled The Golden Chain
Premiere: Performance Network, Ann Arbor, MI, 1986. Subsequently performed in lecture demonstrations throughout Michigan; at the Choreography Course in Dublin, Ireland; at the Anemo Theater, Mykonos, Greece.
Duration: 6 minutes
Dancer and costume: Jessica Fogel
Music: Excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio - II. Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto. At the premiere performance, Glinka’s “Doubt” was also included.
Lighting Design: Mary Cole
Description: This solo is inspired by a poem entitled “Snapshot” written in Russian and English by my father, Ephim Fogel, which he composed on the occasion of the death of his mother, Elizabeth Fogel. The poem’s title, in turn, was inspired by a Polaroid photo my brother Dan took on the occasion of our grandmother meeting her first great grandchild, Nicholas, two days before she died. The Tchaikovsky trio was something I had heard at home since early childhood. I wore black warmup pants, a woolen cream, pink and red flowered Russian shawl tied around my waist, and pair of pink sweatpants as a shrug on my arms/shoulders. During the first variation, I danced with a nesting doll (a matryoshka), opening it up one doll at a time and setting each of the seven dolls on a diagonal from upstage right to downstage left. From there, I danced a weaving path through and around the dolls. During a dramatic variation, I took my shawl off and danced slightly tongue and cheek in a sturm and drang way. In the last variation, I eventually took my place kneeling at the base of the line of dolls, upstage right, and finished the solo by placing the shawl over my head, like one of the dolls, joining “the golden chain.” When I performed the dance on the windy outdoor stage of the Anemo Theater in Mykonos, Greece, I had to preset pieces of tape so that when I set the dolls down, they would not blow away.
It seems that at the premiere of the work on a September Dances in Exile concert at the Performance Network, I performed the solo to both Tchaikovsky and Glinka’s song, “Doubt,” the latter sung live. I do not recollect this version well, although I have included choreographic notes I found from that version below. Later, in revising the work and performing it on several solo lecture demonstration performances, I took away the Glinka music, using only the Tchaikovsky theme and variations, and retitled the solo The Golden Chain, drawn from the first line of my father’s poem “Snapshot” : The golden chain grows longer;”
Fogel journal/choreographic notes
Snapshot, a poem by Ephim Fogel in remembrance of his mother, Elizabeth Fogel
Review, Marianne Danks Rudnicki, Ann Arbor News
Program from premiere performance