Dancers Mary Jane Pennington and Noëlle Davé rehearse for ‘Siddhartha, She’ on the Goat Farm. (Images by Robin Wharton)
Siddhartha, She, a brand new opera by Grammy Award-winning composer Christopher Theofanidis and librettist Melissa Studdard, will premiere on the Aspen Music Competition on August 2. The artistic course of for this multi-disciplinary and sprawlingly collaborative work has deep roots in Atlanta. Beneath the baton of Maestro Robert Spano, music director laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the brand new opus will characteristic motion by Atlanta-based choreographer Lauri Stallings, the founder and creative information of the motion arts platform glo.
Whereas Colorado patrons might be first to witness Siddhartha, She’s full spectacle within the Competition’s Klein Music Tent, Stallings has given Atlanta audiences some compelling first glimpses throughout free, open work-in-process showings. The newest was final Saturday, July 19, on the Goat Farm Arts Heart.
The warmth within the vaulted, cathedral-like area of Goodson Studio, the place Stallings was rehearsing transferring artists Noëlle Davé and Mary Jane Pennington, was a bit shy of stifling and examined the higher limits of tolerable. To the correct of the doorway, Stallings had arrange a tableau of choices to blunt the sting of summer time’s swelter and welcome those that had braved it — cool, home-brewed hibiscus tea in a blue tin teapot, Chimes ginger candies, candles and calling playing cards adorned with photographs of glo’s artwork and call data.
Stallings is an intensely-focused and cerebral artist, and her work usually actively resists aesthetic boundaries and (projected, maybe, greater than established) Southeastern cultural norms. On the similar time, such homey touches and real Southern hospitality are at all times integral, anticipated points of a glo occasion.
Like Stallings, multidisciplinary visible artist Anne Patterson, who’s directing and designing Siddhartha, She, is a longtime collaborator of Spano’s, and he or she beforehand encountered Stallings via the choreographer’s work with the ASO. That is their first time collaborating on the identical manufacturing, nonetheless.
Patterson acknowledged that, in dialog with Stallings, one typically has the sense she is utilizing a barely totally different language — or at the least utilizing language otherwise — reaching for depths of that means and connection past the strange. Nonetheless, she mentioned, “Lauri is so beneficiant. She invitations you in. You’re in a position to be weak, and that’s a really pretty place to be if you’re making artwork like this.”
Siddhartha, She is predicated on Herman Hesse’s 1922 basic novel, Siddhartha — with a twist. Theofanidas and Studdard have recast the titular important character as feminine.
“I couldn’t assist however take into consideration how attention-grabbing it may be to create a model through which extra of the characters are feminine,” mentioned Studdard. Reconsidering gender roles additionally allowed her to foreground respecting and attaining steadiness as a story theme. “No matter their gender, I attempted to attract out each the historically ‘masculine’ and ‘female’ sides or energies of every character,” she mentioned.
Inside the musical composition, Theofanidis has carried out one thing related with the masculine character of Gautama Buddha, who might be performed by countertenor Key’mon W. Murrah. Countertenors are male opera singers who can deal with the upper vocal vary sometimes sung by feminine sopranos. “He has probably the most unearthly, stunning voice. I wrote the half with him in thoughts,” mentioned Theofanidis.
As observers discovered their means into Goodson, Dave’ and Pennington rehearsed a piece through which they embody the delirious love affair between Siddhartha and the courtesan Kamala. Stallings ported her laptop computer round in order that Patterson, who joined by way of videoconference, might observe their coordinated partnering and tender embraces in a spiraling dance of courtship that ends with a passionate kiss.
Stallings and Patterson defined that the dancers will share the stage with a full orchestra, the principle solid and a refrain of 24. A further 40 refrain members might be positioned within the viewers.
Siddhartha, She represents the most recent evolutionary stage of a narrative Hesse himself formed of narrative clay drawn from the traditional historical past of the Buddha. In a story about transformation and impermanence, the dancers are shapeshifters, taking over a number of personae and layering their our bodies with richly textured symbolic and literary references.
Whereas describing the method for Siddhartha, She, Stallings paged via the pocket book she retains to doc it. Interleaved amongst her personal phrases and footage, and a pasted-in watercolor sketch of a river by Patterson, are ephemera associated to the ultimate days of earthly life for Stallings’ father, Harry. He “transitioned,” as Stallings describes it, within the weeks main as much as the displaying. “He’s a part of this, too,” she mentioned.
Along with the sketches, Patterson offered rivers made of material and ribbon to information Stallings in creating a gestural vocabulary that can mesh with different points of the manufacturing, together with video projections by Adam Larsen, soundscape composition by Patrick Harlin, costumes by Margaret Ann Phillips and Patterson’s scenic installations.
The theme of transformation percolates via the opera’s design in a myriad methods. The ribbon river with which Pennington draped herself throughout rehearsal, for instance, contains recycled materials from Blue Bliss, one among Patterson’s ribbon installations. Phillips and Stallings selected the dancers’ costumes from glo’s archives, deciding on blue silk creations initially constructed by Stallings’ mom for the MOCA GA set up, the room for tender choreographies.
“Blue isn’t a colour that I often work with,” mentioned Stallings. “However when Margaret requested me if I had something we might use, these instantly got here to thoughts.” Stallings finds it becoming that, after being tucked away for years, “all of these stitches representing [her] mom’s tiny, repeated gestures” could have one other life in Siddhartha, She.
Stallings will arrive in Aspen on Wednesday, July 23, and the transferring artists, together with Laila Rosen, will be a part of her on Friday. Stallings could have simply over every week to work in individual with your complete solid and refrain, and he or she has plans to choreograph them right into a collective embodiment of the river that leads Siddhartha to enlightenment.
If Stallings accomplishes her objective, will probably be one among her largest “individuals mover” installations so far, and in one more becoming transformation, will carry her “social follow choreography,” which frequently takes place outdoor in non-traditional areas, onto the opera stage.
Spano mentioned one of many causes the collaboration has labored so effectively is he, Stallings and Patterson have a shared understanding that their job is to assist Theophanidis and Studdard notice their imaginative and prescient. “We’re midwives to what Chris and Melissa have created,” he mentioned. “They’re the top of Zeus from which Athena has sprung; that is their work we try to carry to life.”
Whereas every part will transfer rapidly within the days resulting in the premiere, Siddhartha, She has been the work of years, even a long time. Theofanidis mentioned the seeds of the undertaking have been planted greater than 20 years in the past when he was engaged on concepts for a fee with Patrick Summers, creative and music director of the Houston Grand Opera.
“Patrick despatched me the novel,” Theofanidis mentioned. “It didn’t occur then for quite a lot of causes, however the thought for an opera based mostly on Siddhartha resurfaced when Melissa, Patrick [Harlin], Anne, Robert and I have been fellows on the Hermitage artist retreat.” The plan turned extra concrete through the pandemic when the group started having common video calls to debate it.”
“Relationships draw out of us artwork that we didn’t even know we contained,” Stallings mentioned when reflecting on her quite a few collaborations with Spano. Studdard agreed, describing the opposite collaborators’ time collectively on the Hermitage. “Once you carry collectively artists from totally different disciplines, it type of roughs issues up, including texture to the conversations that occur,” she defined.
“We’re all associates who’ve a deep belief in each other and our respective experience in our personal domains,” Theofanidis continued. “All artwork is a response to one thing else. The glue right here is the drama of Siddhartha, She itself, and the need all of us need to see that on the stage.”
::
Robin Wharton studied dance on the College of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet College. As an undergraduate at Tulane College in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Firm. Along with a bachelor of arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a legislation diploma and a Ph.D. in English, each from the College of Georgia.