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 21st 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 19th-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
bewigged18th-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.
