Dancers inspire music

DANA SCHLANGER

October has been a lucky month in Vancouver: not only did we have spectacular weather until last week, but we will also get to sample the Chutzpah! Festival early. Aszure Barton and Artists’ Awáa: Project XII is coming to the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre next week – and it will feature the music of versatile composer Ljova (Lev Zhurbin), who created the show’s “soundtrack” with Curtis Macdonald.

Ljova’s father, Alexander Zhurbin, is Russia’s foremost composer for film and musical theatre; his mother, Irena Ginzburg, is a distinguished poet, writer and journalist. Ljova was born in Moscow, grew up “in a household filled with music, books and an unquenchable hunger for culture,” moved to New York when he was 11, studied violin then viola, went to Julliard and seemed destined for a classical career as a violist when his world expanded through, of all things, playing weddings. He credits fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants situations with opening him up to an amazing array of music, to improvisation and inventive arrangements.

In a phone interview with the Jewish Independent, Ljova galloped through his background in an effort to explain his musical genre – or lack thereof.

“I never tried to put a finger on it and I’d rather pass the task of defining it to other people,” he said. “Most of my music today is a cross between klezmer and Gypsy folk music, which inspires me a lot, the freedom of jazz, the work I’ve done in film music, the work of arranging Asian and eastern European works for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, as well as Indian and Sephardic pieces for the Kronos Quartet.... I think the closest thing to call it is ‘new music’ or ‘personal music.’ I have a blog entry on my website named ‘Stop calling it classical – get a genrectomy,’ and I end it by saying that you have to be master of own your turf.”

And where does music for contemporary dance fit? “The music we created for Awáa, and also for the previous project Busk, is part of this personal music,” he explained. “They come from trying to experiment with the intimacy of one instrument, most of it is one viola, percussion, multi-track, the intimacy of playing everything yourself. I’m not even writing anything down, but just record[ing] ideas and then develop[ing] them with the dancers.”

Serendipity, in the shape of Mikhail Baryshnikov, brought Aszure Barton and Ljova together.

“I went to a concert at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre in New York,” said Ljova. “They were playing a couple of my pieces and gave Baryshnikov my new Mnemosyne CD. He passed it on to Aszure, because the music had a certain eastern European, Gypsy flair that he knew would very much interest her. She came to some of our New York performances, was very inspired by the music and wanted to work together right away.”

In an interview with New York Magazine, Barton spoke about the instant connection: “Misha Baryshnikov gave me Lev’s CD and said we shared similar hearts, and we do. I’ve always been infatuated with the world of Gypsy sound. Lev has an incredibly joyful presence with this underlying drama of Russian angst. I feel like I can relate to that sense of humor within darkness.”

Awáa: Project XII was developed by dancers and musicians together at the Banff Centre, which Ljova described as “the most intoxicating, the most addictive experience and place to be – Banff, I long to be back there! I created all the music, I composed/performed/edited my most personal and intimate music to date – fully inspired by the dancers – in a Banff Centre practice hut, watching rehearsals for hours per day, sharing meals with the dancers, hiking around Banff, all this for about six to seven weeks in the spring. The first time we went there, I was on Skype with my family and our oldest son, who was three then, went away for a minute and packed a little suitcase with a dreidel and a teddy bear and said, ‘I’m going to the airport, I’m going to fly to Banff.’ So ... next time, it was a 10-day trip and we took the kids and my wife came as well – all of us were that much more inspired!”

About the music for Awáa, the press release reads, “The musical score will be percussive and alive.” Ljova explained: “ I’ve often found that contemporary music – whether it’s Jay-Z or Philip Glass or Socalled – has become increasingly dependent around loops, repeating the same material again and again, so I tried to use the idea of loops as an inspiration, but trying to create loops that would throw me off and bring unexpected results. Many of the loops in Awáa are lopsided and slightly chaotic.... Curtis Macdonald and I worked side by side, we’d constantly feed new material to each other, making suggestions and playing on each other’s tracks. Curtis was amazing to work with, an incredibly deep and gifted musician, always seeking the subtler meaning, the greater questions.”

Among the many things Ljova and Barton have in common is the search for the odd, unusual element, to jolt the consciousness of the dancers and the audience.

“I aspire to write dance music that makes you wish you had three or five or seven feet, or just plain makes you think,” said Ljova. “I feel that 98 percent of the music we hear is either in 4/4 (rock ’n’ roll time) or 3/4 (waltz time): it’s too dominant and too boxed in. When I started playing world music – from the Middle East, India and also from eastern Europe – I found people there count quite differently. This really brings about very complex results. The time signature is often in five or seven or 13, and then I combined it with elements of Cuban music, and that inspired endless possibilities of shifting the layers of melodies.

“Aszure does a very similar thing in dance,” he continued. “She’ll take something apparently simple and have them count to 13 or 11 or some other odd number that goes against the phrase. That creates a whole new meaning to what is already going on. We’re very much of a similar mind. We’re, in a way, trying to outgun each other with this!”

Awáa is at the Rothstein Theatre from Oct. 24-28. For a peak, visit vimeo.com/51133591. For tickets, call 604-257-5111 or visit ticketstonight.ca or chutzpahfestival.com.

Dana Schlanger is a freelance writer and director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts.

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