by Leigh Witchel
Everybody knows Miro. Including me. A pianist, composer and also choreographer, Miro Magloire is a fixture and friend from the New York dance scene and his New Chamber Ballet has been around since 2004. Magloire and his group performed consistently on a chamber scale, always (and only) using women, and performing in studios. After close to two decades, he’s a surprising reminder of what you can do if you have the stamina to just keep working and march to the beat of your own drummer.
This concert was performed in the rhombus, with chairs arranged in a neat line around the perimeter of a large studio at the Mark Morris Dance Center.
“Deep Breath” began with loud scratching on Doori Na’s violin as two women, Nicole McGinnis and Amber Neff, twisted round themselves. As always, the women Magloire works with were tall and leggy.
The score was a commission from Elizabeth Gartman. The pianist, Melanie Feder, plucked the strings from the open top of her instrument like a harp.
Magloire was digging into a neutral vocabulary, one that didn’t suggest an obvious relationship stereotype, for female partnering. One woman tipped the other forward and braced the other’s weight on her own thighs. Later on she lifted her on to her back. Later, one carried the other curled round her waist and then let her tumble down and off. All in pointe shoes, which are some of the most inherently unstable foot gear ever. But Magloire’s goal wasn’t pretty.
“Deep Breath” was more sculptural than kinetic, but it dove into that. The vibe was precarious; the women were rarely stable except for a few deliberate moments. They clasped each other’s hands, rolling their heads as if keening. One flipped and carried the other, her legs gently retracting like an underwater piston. As the music for the short duet died out the women ended up almost impossibly arched on the floor. The work was bracing, daring and calmly radical.
The rest of the performance was taken up by “Munu Munu,” an hour-long work for five women accompanied by a live vocal ensemble: Philadelphia’s “Variant Six,” a sextet of two women and four men. It was a small miracle the work saw the light of day; it was postponed three times because of pandemic issues. Rescheduling five dancers and six singers is the kind of nightmare that gives an independent dancemaker cold sweats.
The music was a mix of old and kinda-new: medieval polyphony and Toby Twining’s vocal music from the 1990’s. Twining’s album “Shaman” was well known, even overused by downtown choreographers two decades ago (even I did a piece to it), but the mix of the acidic harmonies of 14th century music and Twining’s diverse vocal sounds exploring the possibility of the voice provided the right backdrop for Magloire and the work. Still, it took time to peel away from focusing on the singers and the many ways they were making sounds, to look at the dancers.
The quintet of women were dressed by Sarah Thea Craig in simple filmy navy leotards and long wrap skirts irregularly gathered at the back. They began with their arms locked in a star formation at the center. The sculptural quality seemed less from ballet and more from film choreography: Busby Berkeley or Esther Williams.
The second song, “Aquila Altera” by Jacopo da Bologna, was sung by two women and a man. Three women continued pulling in a ring as two of them moved off balance outside. This was the structure Magloire delved into throughout: three in the central orbit, two outside. It echoed the medieval nature of the sounds; the most basic medieval dance was the circle dance. There was also the mystical nature of the circle, and an orbit: the music of the spheres.
The women’s vocabulary was both familiar: extensions to the side, and “what if?” Magloire asked women in pointe shoes to do cartwheels and shoulder stands, and didn’t bother asking them to look like ballerinas while doing it. The two outer women ended in a lotus position; the three inner finished in a tight circle, sitting with a hand on their neighbor’s forehead.
At times, the studio felt like a laboratory. The most pungent moments were sculptural, as when the central trio danced with interlocked arms moving up and down like a jacquard loom. Or when the dancers lay on one another’s thighs in a circle, their arms extended upwards like fronds. There were almost no enchaînements; Magloire’s ignored them. There was also little in the way of traveling steps, mostly the dancers walked.
The dancers, McGinnis, Neff, Anabel Alpert, Megan Foley and Rachele Perla, performed Magloire’s choreography with commitment, concentration and a willingness to try what he asked. Including two-women wheelbarrowing cartwheels they almost spun out of.
“Munu Munu” didn’t ricochet between polyphony and Twining; after the opening song by Twining there was a long block of each. Magloire is a skilled enough musician that he understands the links between compositions. The ballet didn’t feel like a jukebox, but mostly through the tenacity of the choreography, a continuing idea.
When the Twining resumed, the pace picked up. A trio slid at the side like a scrimmage; the singers vibrated their index fingers across their mouths like a childhood joke while the dancers slowly tumbled over one another’s shoulders. The 3/2 division resumed, and moved on to pointe work, escalating to jumps.
In one number, one dancer posed as if for applause, while the others were behind, almost like backup in a post-modern girl group. Twining’s “Shaman” was the last number, and his best known. As in the music, the dancing had folk elements – skipping back and forth before turning into a trio and duo that clasped hands and struggled. By this point, somewhere around an hour in with few breaks or places to hide, “Munu Munu” was an endurance test; the conquest of Everest. It ended with the women racing off on a triumphant chord towards the studio door.
Years back, Magloire’s work looked estimable, but because of the constrained circumstances – budget, dancers, space – it also looked like it would be something everyone was polite about and few people attended. He wasn’t going to reach escape velocity.
Most artists get the message after a while, or just run out of stamina and quit. He didn’t. He created a low-budget sustainable platform and kept working, now for nearly two decades. Not only that, but instead of trying to fix his perceived weaknesses, he dug into his strengths. What Magloire is doing, especially with female partnering for ballet, is stuff that would be hailed as cutting edge in a mainstream venue. Because it is. Only he isn’t making a fuss about it.
This isn’t for the general public; it’s for ballet nerds. Magloire’s work still isn’t kinetic, or dance-y, and isn’t trying to be any more popular than it is. If you’re looking for something satisfying that’s pretty and flows, don’t go. That’s like wishing for Mozart and winding up with Stockhausen. But Stockhausen needed to exist so the rest of music could incorporate some of his ideas. And like him, Magloire’s work feels only like his own.
Instead of doing the smart thing and giving up, damned if Magloire doesn’t now have one of the most uncompromised voices in ballet: an R&D lab for the form. His work is not about ballet movement, but the possibilities of ballet and looking at the form with a genuinely altered viewpoint.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Deep Breath,” “Munu Munu” – New Chamber Ballet
Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn, NY
April 8, 2022
Cover: New Chamber Ballet in “Munu Munu.” Photo credit © Arnaud Falchier.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
