"Layla and Majnun"
Mark Morris Dance Company
Cal Performances
Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
October 1, 2016
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2016
I don’t remember who said that a movement’s ending was as important as its trajectory. That’s the magic second or two when an image engraves itself on your retina until time wipes it out. Mark Morris played on that phenomenon again and again in his exquisite “Layla and Majnun" which received its world premiere this weekend at UC Berkeley.” The dancers stop in opposing symmetries, punctuated spaces, heads inclined, arms softly rounded, and torsos tilted. More than anything else, they recalled Persian paintings. They also framed and paid tribute to the music by the superb Silk Road Ensemble and singers, Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova who, seated center stage, barely budged. But it’s through their voices — sometimes recalling Flamenco’s cante hondo — that we learn of the tragedy of this Eastern Romeo and Juliet. Morris’ choreography — his most imagistic that I can think of in a long time — revolves around the focal point of the music. By having different couples dance the titular roles in each of the four movements — the last pulling everyone on stage — he also directed the story away from the personal towards a more universal human tragedy.
Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova in "Layla and Majnun". Photo: David O'Connor
The sixty-minute work is based on the 1908 opera by Azerbaijani composerUzeyir Hajibeyli, available on YouTube. You can’t miss its grand opera gestures which Qasimov, Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobson, however, condensed into an exquisitely focused version which retained the integrated perspective of western and Azerbaijani music. The original version's chorus and additional singers are here carried by Morris always strong dancers. Sung in the original language, super titles helped our understanding but also gave an inkling of the lush poetry and a quasi-transcendental concept of human love. Curious was the idea that love and suffering are inextricably connected; the very concept of passion, apparently, is painful.
Morris used his dancers as a shadowing device but they also entered into the lovers' plight. In the first scene, the ensemble looked on if they were encountering a curiosity. But gradually you could feel the increasing power of a tribe.The ensemble also divided and rearranged relationship, both same sex and hetero. Dancers often glided, hopped and walk sideways but retained frontal orientation. Softly rounded arms looked just about perfect. While Morris clearly drew on a number of dance traditions, he submitted them to his sense of formality and elegance; restraint remained prominent whether it was in line formations, weeping women strategically placed and or even in the dervish-like whipping turns.
Among the various coupled lovers, Stacy Marana and Dallas McMurray drew attention with their youthful exuberance; she with yearning torso and he with fast toe hops, borrowed from Azerbaijani folk dance. In the rejection scene, the two parent couples (Lauren Grant, Brian Lawson, Michelle Yard) wove themselves through the stage, retinue in tow. With its march-like intensity, you couldn't help but recall the long-held animosity between the families of the other R+J. When the men sat and pounded the floor, the women responded by putting down their forearms. Diminutive Domingo Estrada, Jr., a fireball of a Majnun (who in the original story was mad), tore through space as if taking on the universe. Yet lovely was his encounter with his Layla, Nicole Sabella, when he tried to reach her with multiple turns and elongated arabesques that moved him farther away, instead of closer. She responded similarly with turns and attitudes derriere. In the wedding scene with Durrell R. Comedy, a handsome almost solicitous Paris, yielded a dramatic, quite physical yanking trio with Sam Black and Lesley Garrison. In the context of this work, it felt almost too literal. In the last scene the four couples and everyone else crossed paths and almost but not quite touched hands. Did it suggest at least the possibility of an after-life reconciliation? an apotheosis? While beautiful in the variety of gestures, it just didn't quite ring true. It also served a painful reminder of the world outside the theater.
An overture by singers Kamila Nabiyeva and Miralam Miralamov and two instrumentals served as a much welcome introduction to the Azebaijanian mugham tradition (improvisation within a give mode) which seemed here to apply not only to singers but also instrumentalists.
"Layla and Majnun's" production credits include Howard Hodgkin's strong expressionistic set (realized by Johan Henckens) and costume design (execution Maile Okamura) and James F. Ingalls fluid lighting design.