When Stanford Live presents The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns on Oct. 27 at Bing Concert Hall, it will be a very different version from the original.
Written in 1886 as a lighthearted spoof on musical themes by other composers, Saint-Saëns’ work received only a handful of private performances during his lifetime. (He wanted to maintain a “serious” reputation.) It wasn’t until 1922, a year after his death, that the piece was published and then boomed in popularity.
The original is scored for two pianos and a small chamber orchestra. Stanford Live’s presentation will scale back the ensemble to just violin, cello, and the two pianos and will add spoken-word poetry and dance for something of a more dramatic interpretation.
How this new version came together must be kismet because the major players — Wendy Whelan, a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet and now the company’s associate artistic director; Francesca Harper, this production’s choreographer and director; and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, a poet, activist, and hip-hop theater artist — all knew each other but had never worked together before.
Harper says, “When I was still dancing, Wendy and I actually performed at a gala at the same time. She came to my dressing room and said, ‘You’re my kind of dancer. I really love your work.’ That began our friendship and connection. … When this project started, Wendy suggested me. I have also been a fan of Marc’s work for a long time. I thought, ‘This is going to be a really transformative experience for all of us.’”
Whelan explains that a manager connected her with Joseph, thinking they “could make an interesting pairing. But I didn’t know if he wanted to have a dancer or an actor as part of [his idea for a reimagined Carnival of the Animals]. It was something that I was immediately interested in and curious about, and it’s been in flower ever since. We had our first little, tiny preview showing in August 2019 in Central Park. Just a little excerpt of what we had been playing with, the beginnings of this idea. And then the pandemic hit.”
But COVID restrictions weren’t the only reason for the piece’s long gestation. “A lot of the piece was developed remotely,” Joseph says. He works as vice president and artistic director of social impact at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., while Whelan and Harper are based in New York. “All of us have pretty demanding day jobs, what I call square jobs,” he jokes.
He describes his process of adapting The Carnival of the Animals: “I would be inspired by a certain animal in the menagerie. I would write a piece. I would make a voice note. We would work on those things together. We were in different locations, but we were guided by the same inspiration. And then [there were] the added layers of our musical director and composer, Sugar Vendil, who would chime in with specific ideas about what music fit where. So it came together in a very postmodern way. The music borrows from Saint-Saëns, but it traffics in contemporary classical composition, found sounds, and multimedia. The piece doesn’t follow the 14-movement mini-suite progression of The Carnival of the Animals. Our Carnival has a cappella moments, it has contemporary moments, and it has moments of abstraction.
Joseph adds that the metaphor of a “political jungle” is what ties the whole piece together, which he only realized midway through the development process, living and working in Washington, D.C. “Jan. 6 and my physical proximity to the events of that day crystallized what the narrative through line would be. And three years later, here we are. [This Carnival of the Animals is] for folks who are interested maybe most specifically in classical music. But it’s as if there were a classical chamber concert that they sat down to watch, which then was beautifully, dramatically, and entertainingly hacked.”
