Soldiers' Mass

I went to the Houston Ballet tonight, and as has often been the case, this is nudging me to post about it. The three pieces were programmed in the right order, going from the more classical ("The Leaves are Fading" by Antony Tudor) to the most contemporary, "Soldiers' Mass" by Jiří Kylián, on music by Bohuslav Martinů. The middle piece, "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude," choreographed by William Forsythe on Schubert Ninth Symphony, was a nice transition piece, the most recently premiered of all three, yet not as modern as Soldiers' Mass, and in comparison just a nice little academic exercise.

Instead of writing my own review of Soldiers' Mass, though, I found this one written after the first New York City performance by the Nederlands Dans Theater (a year after the premiere in Scheveningen, Netherlands), and it is so good that I can only bow in deference to Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times, 7 July 1981), and quote:

In some respects, "Soldiers' Mass" might recall Antony Tudor's "Echoing of Trumpets," a great antiwar ballet to another Martinu score, "Fantasies Symphoniques." That ballet, however, was inspired by the German massacre of Czech civilians at Lidice in World War II, an event that also spurred a Martinu work.

Like Antony Tudor, to whom he dedicates another ballet this season, Mr. Kylian is an expressionist and a romantic. He is, like Mr. Tudor, interested in the weighted gesture, the broad, abstracted emotion. He is not a step-oriented choreographer.

In "Soldiers' Mass," known otherwise as the "Field Mass," he is not concerned with civilians but with very human fears and youngsters called to duty, conscripts. His approach is generalized, and in this faceless mass of 12 men, the individual's predicament surges all the more poignantly.

The men, dressed in stylized khaki outfits, are seen in a typical Kylian pose, with their backs to us. Just as typically, they will tend to move in a mass. One of the glories of Kylian choreography at its peak is its choral sweep. And here the actual male chorus in the pit, conducted by David Porcelijn with Bernard Kruysen as the touching baritone soloist, is at one with the dancers onstage.

The images are not all unfamiliar -- men cringe and fall. They die multiple deaths, and their mutual consolation and isolated fears are all clear. When one small figure -- Chris Jensen -- breaks out for a solo, the picture of wasted youth becomes embodied in the very energy he displays and that we know will die out. There are also stereotyped movements, using Martha Graham's floorwork. But there are also sensational theatrical moments. At one point, the dancers sing, as the condemned, along with the chorus. Another time, they rip of their shirts. Mr. Kylian's horizon decor, which disappears and reappears, is just as dramatic. In the end, the cross and the firing squad become one: A ballet that moves the mind and the heart.

She said it all -- the passion, the humanity, the tragedy, the stupidity of war. It was beautiful and moving. I believe that the solo piece mentioned above was the one danced by principal dancer Connor Walsh tonight -- a dancer I have (app)lauded in this blog before (see the entry for 23 February 2008, about Swan Song). And yes, the venerable New York Times spelled "Kylian" and "Martinu" without the diacriticals on the "a" and "u". Shame on them.

A Moment of Screaming, Please

As I started my almost weekly drive from Austin to Houston this afternoon, the classical radio station (KMFA) was finishing Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, From the New World. After that, the announcer came on and said that on the occasion of Memorial Day, the station would join its listeners in a minute of silence to honor the servicemen and -women who had died. Silence dutifully followed.

I don't know about you, but while I am tremendously saddened by the lost of those young lives, and I am as ready as the next person to honor their memory, the last thing that comes to mind as a reaction to the current war, which has so far cost more than 4,000 such lives, is silence. In fact, what I want to do when I think of that war is scream. I want to scream to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld (wherever the last two are now hiding in deserved disgrace): I know you didn't fire the bullets or arm the IEDs that killed these people, but you manufactured the conflict in which they were killed. You are thus complicit in their deaths. And the memory of these poor people is not well served by silence, it is better served by an outcry -- hopefully an outcry that will continue until November 4, Election Day, so that you are not succeeded by more of the same.

On the same drive a week earlier, I heard a reading from the book "War Wounds: a Father and Son Return to Vietnam" by Tom Bissell. One quote struck me, so I sent a text message to my own email address in order to remember to look it up, and I now have it as one of my email signatures, ready to be used for the right audience:
"War, when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable."