Teething

First night back in Williamstown (what a different kind of W-town is it now) was Friday. Drove all day to hit the coffeeshop 15 minutes before closing and dawdle through Paresky, griping about facilities. Can't be legally let into my room until Monday because of a snafu with paperwork. By snafu, I mean, facilities says: "What day do you start work?" and I answer honestly and my card can't be activated or key obtained til then. How unkept and unhoused do you want your tourguides to be?

On Night 1, though, at our shiny best, Mom and I hit MassMoCA for the Roomful of Teeth works-in-progress concert. RoT is phenomenal vocal ensemble founded and conducted by Brad Wells, who is on the Williams music department faculty. (Check them out, with full vids of last year's MassMoCA residency, here: www.roomfulofteeth.org). Briefly, the ensemble is composed of eight classically trained singers, 4 men, 4 women, who are introduced to global vocal styles (thus far, Tuvan throat singing, yodeling, belting, and Inuit throat singing) and then work with a few young scruffy gracious composers -- all present at Friday's performance -- to create a variety of vocal pieces within the frame of 2-3 week residencies. This is a very dry way of saying, they will change the way you think about music and musical performance.

I imagine it's best to see them live: in a crowded, non-air conditioned warehouse performance space, in midsummer, in exhausted evening, they were riveting. The pure movement of the vocalization is pretty cool. Making the sounds requires full-body engagement, such that even the most sedate pieces really foregrounded breath, and each had a dramatic arc that was a pure product of sound. On top of which the compositions were across-the-board awesome (I am going to except one piece, a chant which the composer reassured the audience was "really happy," with a German text meaning "Man is God." The exclusively male cast and stomping + two-finger conducting style that accompanied this piece were unfortunately and, I pray, unintentionally, neo-Nazi). As a dancer, or perhaps more specifically, as someone who experiences music as a physical impulse, I was blown away by the choreographic possibility of the work, which I think is not incidental: among the composers is a group member who also improvises with NYU dance students. I spoke to another one of the composers after the show about a witty piece entitled "High Done No Why To" which left a series of picture stills (and movement, throws) in my head. The same guy put together the night's penultimate performance, a setting of a poem about Bear Bryant, football coach, who died 28 days into retirement. He'd suggested that he might - die - to fill his time (true story). It featured a discombobulating/awe-inspiring belt solo that wouldn't stop, with a really catchy hook: "There is no subtlety in death, it's like a hurricane, it's like Farrakhan..."

The brief Q&A that followed the show highlighted the playfulness of the group as a whole. They're occupying space in what I guess might be a new wave of collaborative performance. In the same way I hear tell or see evidence of groups like Satori (Williams/Yale alums), new theater house, Apogee, SITI Company, I'm witnessing the value of an artistry that is process and community-oriented, and that produces really exciting work because of it. Somehow the impressions I had of "the business" leaving NCSA were primarily commercial; I'm glad to be reworking that into a more human model of how you live, how above what you do, how informing what (is possible). And obviously, I'm still working on articulating this. The mulling is incidental: point is, a really exciting performance. I wanted to share it.