Title: Seven Ways of Looking at a River
Premiere: 1983, Horace Mann Theater, Teachers College, Columbia University, NYC. Subsequently performed at SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY, April 1984
Performers at Teachers College premiere: Vasso Barboussi, Jessica Fogel, Leigh Smith, Jane Scarth, Catherine Tharin, Gin Gin Wu
Costumes: Jessica Fogel
Duration: 12 minutes
Music: Romances, Women’s voices, Op. 69 and Op. 91, by Robert Schumann plus tape collage
Description: This was choreographed closely to the Robert Schumann music, a series of short secular songs for unaccompanied women’s voices. In the final section and image, one of the dancers forms a bridge with her body, and the other dancers help a dancer to leap over that bridge. This was an important image for me, a symbol of moving into new territory with a sense of optimism. I took the title of a Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and converted it to Seven Ways of Looking at a River. There was water imagery throughout. Some of the inspirations for the movement came from William Blake paintings. A crawling exercise as detailed by Margaret H’Doubler is present throughout the dance, as a metaphor for the river. At one point, I wandered through the scene of dancers, playing the melody line of the music on my violin. I am not sure if I had a copy of the English translations of the German lyrics or not. I recall there was one section where the dancers mimicked the music’s rhythms with a trotting prance and a gesture of slapping a horse’s hind legs. There are several photos and an extensive journal of notes, and there may be a video of the dance from a performance given at SUNY Brockport in 1984 . I created and sewed the costumes, which were A-line cotton-knit dresses in shades of blue and green.
Seven Ways of Looking at a River performance Horace Mann 4 TC Columbia performance Horace Mann Theater 1983.
Performance photo, Seven Ways of Looking at a River, Horace Mann Theater, 1983
Performance photo, Seven Ways of Looking at a River, Horace Mann Theater, 1983
Note: In the background, the dancers are doing a crawling exercises by Margaret H’Doubler, a dance education pioneer we studied in the Dance masters program at Teachers College.
Performance photo, Seven Ways of Looking at a River, Horace Mann Theater, 1983
Rehearsal, Seven Ways of Looking at a River, Teachers College studio, Gin Gin Wu, foreground. Fogel on violin. Vasso, Jane and Leigh carrying Catherine Tharin.
Rehearsal, Seven Ways of Looking at a River, Teachers College studio, Catherine Tharin, center.
Rehearsal, Seven Ways of Looking at a River, Teachers College studio.