Title: Chanticleer

Premiere: Horace Mann Theater, Teachers College, Columbia University, April 28 & 29, 1983. Subsequently performed by Fogel in numerous settings nationally and internationally.

Performer: Jessica Fogel , with Catherine Tharin at premiere. Subsequently performed by Fogel in numerous settings as a solo.

Duration: 6 minutes

Spoken text by Jessica Fogel

Description:  This solo was originally created as a study presented in a choreography workshop for young professional choreographers taught by Bessie Schönberg at Dance Theater Workshop in NYC in 1982. The study recounted my experience working briefly in 1982 at the Chanticleer Press, a publishing house located at 424 Madison Avenue in NYC. They published, among other things, a series on Audubon birds. I had thought I was being hired by the publishers as a researcher, but as it turns out, my tasks were largely secretarial, and I was not a brilliant typist. While working there, on a coffee break, I opened a birthday card I had received from my friend Martha Wiseman, who quoted Henry James in the card: “We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” I quoted those lines in the solo. In the premiere at Teachers College, I performed it as a duet with Catherine Tharin, who acted as a carbon copy for the letter I was “typing” through movement phrases in the solo. Catherine echoed my movement in a slight canon. Subsequently, I performed it as a solo. It is the solo I performed when I auditioned for my position at University of Michigan. The movement featured sharp staccato spellings of the words I was reciting, as well as puns on and witty interpretations of the words. Many years later, I incorporated this solo into a longer work entitled Dances and Letters and Rhymes.

Text:

That Tuesday, I found myself somewhat suddenly at 424 Madison Avenue, the Chanticleer Press, in a small, windowless area, at a typewriter, behind a desk. I thought I was being hired to do research, but that was apparently not the case. They asked me upon my arrival if I typed, and I told them, “Only a little.” In fact, hardly at all. In college I had been adamant about ….expressive handwriting….so I never typed my papers. They said, well you don’t just go from key to key do you? And I said oh no, I can do better than that!. And so I began the task at hand. At Chanticleer, they had all kinds of rules and forms for the page. They liked you to begin the salutation directly under the letterhead, six spaces down from the top.

Dear Jim. Colon! Further to your letter of November 30th, I am enclosing…

The phone kept ringing, and this was also my task. Chanticleer Press, May I help you? Chanticleer Press! One moment please. I couldn’t figure out how to put people on…..hold….so they kept getting….disconnected.

Now where was I? Oh yes… I am enclosing… three copies of Wildlife East, the Audubon Series….The remainder will be shipped to you on…..

At this point, the receptionist came by and said, “You know hon, you can get some coffee if you’d like. It’s down the hall to the right, in that back room there.”

So I took this opportunity, to escape from the desk, and to open the letter I myself had received that morning in the mail. It quoted Henry James. It said:

[Blackout]

“We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” [lights up]

So with this maxim, as well as a little bit of the instant stuff, I returned to the desk to complete the task at hand. Best wishes. Sincerely yours.

Fogel choreographic notes 4/1/1984

Program, Teachers College premiere, April 1983

Audio of text spoken by Jessica Fogel, with performance pacing

Reviews:

Todd Theater University of Rochester 1984 review

Ann Arbor News Marianne Rudnicki review

Ann Arbor News review by Susan Nisbett 1990