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Upcoming
White Bird events include Merce Cunningham, Stephen Petronio's
company Grupo Corpo and Michael Curry's Spirits.
"There
is nothing so white as thy body. Suffer me to touch thy
body."
--Oscar Wilde's Salome
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Salome
White
Bird presents the Sydney Dance Company at the Keller Auditorium,
222 SW Clay
St., 224-8499
7:30 pm Tuesday,
Oct. 24
$18-$39
She was a Biblical figure who was forced to wait until
the 19th century to be born. Salome is never named in scripture,
appearing in Matthew and Luke's accounts of John the Baptist's
death as "the damsel," step-daughter to Herod, Tetrarch
of Galilee. She remained unnamed until the historian Josephus
exposed her 80 years later, and then she promptly fell back
into semi-obscurity, a poor man's Delilah.
But in the heady, erotic awakening that took place in 19th-century
France, the emotionally charged artists who founded the
Symbolist movement found inspiration in the tale of the
sexually naive young girl whose first carnal stirrings lead
to carnage.
In 1876, the year Flaubert began his Herodias, Gustave
Moreau unveiled a watercolor titled Apparition, an
unnerving study of Salome haunted by the Baptist's head.
Salome would become a recurring theme in Moreau's work.
In 1881, Massenett turned Flaubert's tale into the opera
Herodiade. Mallarmé took on Salome in 1887,
which then inspired Oscar Wilde to write his famous play,
which prompted Aubrey Beardsley's decadent drawings, which
inspired Richard Strauss' jump-start to modern opera, Salome,
in 1905, which led to America's first
art film, Alla Nazimova's all-queer silent in 1922. As
most of these works
of art were long banned throughout the world for the shocking
sensuality they explored, it's arguable that Salome is the
patron saint of the sexual revolution.
The latest work from this legacy is Graeme Murphy's full-length
dance for the acclaimed Sydney Dance Company. Murphy was
inspired to explore the blood-mad dancer's life after directing
a production of Strauss' Salome for Opera Australia.
His work, which has its Portland premiere on Tuesday, Oct.
24, is an astonishing addition to the legend, as I witnessed
watching a video of the piece.
Murphy's constant collaborator, composer-percussionist
Michael Askill, has created an exotic score of muezzin-inflected
songs sung to traditional Middle Eastern instruments. Murphy's
choreography is also immersed in the culture of the East.
The powerfully muscular Josef Brown's Baptist is discovered
contorting his body into a series of arabesque shapes before
being encased in a giant cage that descends from the flies,
soon trailed by an enveloping red cloth. Salome's entrance
is equally arresting. Blanketed in white gossamer in a reference
to Nazimova's Salome, the lithe Tracey Carrodus dances
before a full, milk-white moon--a comparative image that
Wilde first created. The pas de deux that follows
John and Salome's meeting is one of the most electric encounters
to be seen on a stage. In this raw, athletic coupling, Salome
passionately clings like a slur to the Baptist's purity.
Murphy tops this later with the jolting last dance between
Salome and the severed head of her desire (the secret of
this achievement is for the viewer to discover).
The Sydney's corps is packed with equally brilliant soloists,
including Bradley Chatfield
as Herod.
This accomplished and quite staggering piece of theater
expertly synthesizes all that came before it while staking
out new territory of its own. Pity that Oscar, Aubrey and
Alla won't see it.
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