Celebrating the Music of Dance

By Bryce Christensen

“The dance,” declared the French poet Charles Baudelaire, “can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music . . . . Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.”  Baudelaire would have found confirmation for his words had he joined the hundreds who gathered in Cedar City’s Heritage Center on April 21^st for the Orchestra of Southern Utah’s concert dedicated to the theme “Rhythm of Dance.”  Indeed, during the evening’s final and culminating number, Strauss’ Redetzky March, the audience thrilled not only to the propulsive energy of a 19^th-century waltz masquerading as a march but also to the grace and precision of Southern Utah University’s ballroom dance team, who waltzed across the stage and through the concert-hall aisles, their every move a kind of “poetry with arms and legs” revealing “everything mysterious . . . hidden in music.”

But long before SUU’s dancers made their poetic and revelatory entrance, OSU’s gifted musicians had already imaginatively conveyed their listeners to a half dozen ballrooms and dance halls.  For as OSU President Harold Shirley made clear in his welcoming remarks, this was an evening devoted to the magic of dance.

And it was into the spritely joyousness of French gavottes that OSU musicians first carried listeners, beginning the evening with three movements from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major. Under the baton of conductor Carylee Zwang, the orchestra moved nimbly from one dance style to another, transitioning from folk-dance gavottes in the first of the three movements selected for the evening into the double-time rambunctiousness of a French bourrée in the second and then finally into an exuberant French gigue, originally inspired by a British jig, in the third and last.

Still in dance mode but playing at the more courtly tempo of a minuet, the orchestra next performed the third movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor.  Under the direction of guest conductor Qi Li, the orchestra seemed to metamorphose into an elegantly bewigged18^th-century ensemble providing regal music for dignified aristocrats executing polished and deliberate dance moves--exquisite and decorous--surrounded by palatial splendor.

But royal stateliness gave way to dance rhythms bursting with romantic spontaneity when the orchestra next turned to two of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, performed under the baton of conductor Adam Lambert.  Beginning in a lilting and bucolic pastoralism, the first of these numbers quickened into the wild passion of peasant couples hardly touching the ground as they gamboled in wild delight.  This same electric intensity characterized the second of these Eastern European folk dance, erupting in its first measures into a kind of tarantella-like frenzy before modulating into a pacific interlude (giving doubtlessly exhausted dancers a chance to catch their breath) before exploding again into sheer kineticism.

But the frolics of Eastern European dancers faded away when the Orchestra performed as its fourth number Summer Dances by Brian Balmages, again under the direction of Carylee Zwang.  In eerily unearthly tones, the opening strains of this dance-themed composition suggested the alien choreography of some extraterrestrial dancers, perhaps those gracing ballrooms on Neptune or Uranus.  Mars must have been the setting for the dances of a later passage marked by martial cadences and military fanfare. But when the dance harmonies grew melancholy and dark, listeners knew they had returned to the only planet where deep grief inspires sorrowful mourning dances—like those found in Korea, Paraguay, and Melanesia.  Balmages’ harmonies redolent with the pathos of deep loss ultimately yielded to concluding harmonies of hope, reminding listeners that men and women who dance in mourning today may dance in joy tomorrow.

It was decidedly American forms of dance that first captured the limelight after intermission as the delighted audience found itself hearing a premiere performance of Keith Bradshaw’s specially commissioned composition American Suite, a capacious celebration of the regional and ethnic diversity of American dance, directed by Xun Sun. Who could resist the sashaying Southern feistiness of the opening Charleston movement or the rich and faintly melancholic nostalgia suffusing the Blue Ridge Waltz that followed?  Likewise deeply engaging, the third movement, puckishly named Flibberty Jitterbug, captured all the spontaneity and creative freedom, all the restless sense of emancipation, ignited by the jazz revolution of the Twenties, while the fourth movement—Slow Me Down Blues—exposed listeners to soul-piercing tones welling up from the same wells of feeling that find voice in African-American work songs and spirituals.  But it was the string-up-the fiddle-and-clap-your-hands boisterousness of a Midwestern hoedown that swept over the audience during the fifth and final movement, aptly named Dance Down the Barn.

The standing ovation at the close of this number recognized the exceptional gift Keith Bradshaw had given OSU patrons with this splendidly variegated number, the remarkable musical vision Xun Sun had demonstrated in bringing this composition to performance, and the skilled musicians who had responded so ably to his baton.

But those rising for that ovation were especially applauding the two featured soloists for this number: Keith Bradshaw’s daughters Natalie Bradshaw on the violin and Hannah Bradshaw on the viola.  Both astonishingly poised for their age, these two musical artists delivered every passage with complete mastery and nuanced interpretation.  Laudable in their rendition of all five movements, these two rising luminaries shone particularly brightly in Blue Ridge Waltz, where Natalie’s ethereal violin poignantly complemented Hannah’s deeply probing viola.  Together, the Bradshaws—father and daughters—left the audience indebted to them for their collective musical contribution to the community.  The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition was instrumental in supporting the creation of this new music.

No sooner had the echoes of a Nebraska hoedown died out than the orchestra transported the audience across the Pacific to share in a very different kind of dancing.  Quite appropriately, it was Qi Li who led the orchestra in performing Dance of Yao, a composition alive with the pulses of Chinese folk dance.  Unmistakably grounded in the natural rhythms of Chinese rural life and of China’s yin-and-yang Taoist philosophy, this enchanting number brimmed with the life of a verdant Chinese countryside.  Yet attentive listeners also caught the hints of China’s imperial splendor as Asia’s Middle Kingdom.  As a memorable foray into one of the world’s oldest cultures, this number featured four talented soloists.  Violinist Ling Yu (serving for this concert as Concertmaster) dazzled with passages by turns tender and striving. Clarinetist Sarah Solberg poured a rivulet of liquid euphony through her single-reed instrument.  Oboist Brad Gregory made his double-reed sing with a sonority beloved by Mandarin and English speakers alike. And bassoonist Julie Kluber sent her baritone double-reed plunging into the low registers where the earthiness of China connects with the earthiness of America.

A range of soloists also garnered appreciate attention in a number in which the dance theme turned satiric—even burlesque—namely, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld Overture, conducted by Carylee Zwang.  But the five soloists featured in this number all captured the spotlight in the earlier passages of the number--before the irreverent comedy broke out in the “infernal galop” (popularly known as the “can-can”) late in the composition.   Once again, Ling Yu demonstrated her rare musicianship in drawing a lustrous brilliance from her violin, while Brad Gregory again made his oboe an insistent instrument of enchantment.  Adrienne Read breathed a stream of silvery radiance through her flute, while Kendra Leavitt sent a cascade of glittering notes out from her harp over enraptured ears.  And Leah Brown made the lyrical eloquence of her cello so potent that listeners might have supposed they were hearing echoes of Orpheus’ own lyre.   

When, after the final Strass number, strikingly complemented by the performance of SUU’s ballroom dance troupe, the audience rose for a second standing ovation, they did so with a new awareness of the relationship between ears that hear great music and of feet that waltz, tap, salsa, tango, and otherwise dance in poetic and revelatory response to that music.

And though they did not whirl and dance the way SUU’s ballroom couples did, the four conductors who took turns on the podium performed their own valuable choreography, one that inspired confidence that the exceptional leadership that Xun Sun has demonstrated as OSU’s Music Director and Conductor for thirteen years is now influencing not only the instrumentalists in the orchestra seats but also the assistant and guest conductors who share the podium. 

    

And, of course, the overall choreography of the entire evening was possible only because of generous sponsors—namely, Charles and Gloria Maxfield Parrish Foundation and Sally Langdon Barefoot Foundation.  These two foundations helped defray the costs making this exultant festival of dance possible.