The performance I attended Saturday night began with a single performer, dressed in a white tunic, dancing on the stage while waving a flag. Immediately I grew nervous. I knew the performance was supposed to convey spiritual ascension, or even transcendence. The past week had been a rough one for me, and by attending this performance, I was hoping for a little transcendence of my own — some respite, however ephemeral, from my worldly worries. But this first performer seemed to be enacting a ritual to which I personally remained uninitiated. Her flag taunted me like a banner that read:
You do not belong here. You are an outsider, and there will be no ascension for you.
The performance was the premiere of
Songs of Ascension, a work by Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, commissioned in part by Stanford Lively Arts, and presented at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium. Monk (profiled
here) composed the music and choreographed the work's movement. Hamilton created its visual elements. Thus the piece combined music, movement, and visuals with the aim of evoking the otherworldly, or some higher, spiritual realm.
Despite the plural "songs" in the title, the program ran continuously, without pausing even for an intermission. Aside from Monk herself, other performers included Monk's Ensemble, a group of five vocalists and two instrumentalists. Since Monk herself was ill, two of these vocalists necessarily covered some of her lines.
Songs of Ascension also incorporated a string quartet, performed by the Todd Reynolds String Quartet with one substituting violist. Members of the Pacific Mozart Ensemble participated, as well.
Songs of Ascension was inspired by Hamilton's eight-story
Tower, a sculpture in Alexander Valley, California, whose allusive power for evoking the spiritual impressed Monk. The vocal parts especially seemed indebted to the idea of some monumental space. By and large, however, these parts seemed nothing more than short, percussive, syllabic utterances, layered in minimalistic fashion. If these utterances carried any semantic value, their meaning was lost on me, which reminded me of my failure to appreciate the initial waving flag. The vocal parts were amplified and placed around the room, resounding from the stage, balcony, and aisles of the auditorium; I did understand that the resultant effect was an illusion of exaggerated space.
Spiritual Rituals
The piece seemingly did reference specific religious rituals. For example, some vocalists wore red robes that resembled the traditional garb of Tibetan monks, and at times they sat cross-legged on the floor. As I watched the performers, I thought about how my own wandering mind impedes my ability to meditate. At that moment, my mind indeed wandered back to my initial worry: Perhaps I was failing to appreciate the power of this piece because I was unfamiliar with the spiritual rituals to which it was alluding.
Meanwhile, Ann Hamilton's images were projected all around the auditorium. They formed a recurring repertory that included a bird in flight, a man riding a horse, typewritten letters of the alphabet, a ship, and lines of feet wearing shoes. Like primitive animation, they moved choppily along the auditorium walls. I found myself puzzled about their meaning, too. They seemed to depict the mundane or the commonplace, as well as vehicles of freedom and escape. I wondered whether I was interpreting them "correctly," or if instead I was thinking too much, trying too hard to rationalize images that were intended solely for sensory experience.
In short, I sat for some time feeling not at all exalted by
Songs of Ascension, but instead beaten down by a sense of failing to belong, or of failing to comprehend. Eventually, though, I heard the string quartet playing, and I realized that even I understand at least one route to transcendence: synergy, which happens when four string players combine to form a unified whole whose greatness exceeds that of its parts. And I began to see synergy all around me. I had already understood the synergism of the space-enhancing vocal lines, for example. I also realized that my uncertainty about any individual images or gestures did not prevent me from appreciating that they combine to represent bigger, communal rituals.
This performance that began with a single person waving a flag ended with performers filing down the aisle of the auditorium, each waving a similar flag. This time, though, the flags signaled something I understood: ternary form, a shape whose ending recapitulates its own beginning. The performers on the stage, meanwhile, began to lie down. As the diverse performing forces enacted this common gesture, I was reminded of the respite I myself had craved at the start of the performance. But I no longer felt like the outsider I did then. If only for this ephemeral, 70-minute piece, I myself felt part of this work's elusive synergism — part of an experience whose meaning exceeded, but also included, my own ability to understand.