The directions for Terry Riley’s groundbreaking 1964 composition “In C” are pretty straightforward. The one-page score consists of 53 short musical motifs, which the musicians play in sequence. But since each musician chooses how many times to repeat each digit before moving on to the next, there is a continual shift of alignment and displacement. That, combined with the incessant, metronomic tapping of a C note, creates a tension between staying put and moving on. It’s the sound of collective decision-making, the harmonious kind, more buzzing hive than a noisy town hall meeting.
Converting all this into dance, as the German choreographer Sasha Waltz has done, is also quite easy. For the “In C” that Sasha Waltz & guests took to the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday, Waltz came up with 53 dance phrases, one to match each of Riley’s motifs, and gave her 14 dancers the same discretion. For about an hour, the Bang on a Can All-Stars skillfully play Riley’s composition on one side of the stage, while the dancers do something similar throughout.
The added dimension is not just visual. It is spacious in the varying distribution of bodies, which sometimes spill over into the wings with the dancers stringing between the musicians. The play of individual and collective is reproduced in the music, as the dancers constantly shift their allegiances, momentarily in synchronicity with each other in groups ranging from couples to the entire ensemble. You see the decisions happening. In a group repeating a sentence in unison, a dancer freezes; when the others return to the point where she froze, she rejoins them. But the overall look is an action painting swirl.
It’s also on the cheerful side of serene. Olaf Danilsen’s lighting bathes the stage and background in sorbet or sorbet shades. These changing colors are stronger than the slight harmonic movement of Riley’s score, but they don’t push the production out of the key of C.
The dance phrases also float in a slightly loose zone. There is some contrasting jerking or shaking to register the metronome pulse, but one phrase form dominates, stretching elastically in the middle and closing in a clipped fashion, like when a fist reaches up to pull down the cord of a train whistle. There is enough variety – floor work, minimal physical contact – but little that stands out in itself. The action is captivating and easy to tune at the same time.
At its best, the dance spatialises a suspension or tapestry of time. At any given moment, some dancers, repeating a sentence, show where we’ve been, while early adopters of the next sentence give a glimpse of the future. The memory is overlapping here, but only for a short time. The sequence of repeating sentences goes in one direction, and few of those sentences remain in the mind.
A viewer’s memory, of course, encompasses more than this dance. Trisha Brown’s “Set and Reset” came to mind recently on the Brooklyn Academy stage in a Candoco Dance Company adaptation. With its relaxed flow and sudden lineup, Waltz’ In C is clearly influenced by ‘Set and Reset’, just as the pinging in Laurie Anderson’s score for that dance stems from the heartbeat of Riley’s ‘In C’. But remembering “Set and Reset” is remembering how the play of looseness and rigor and individual and group can be much more exciting.
In a recent interview, Waltz explained practical ways that “In C” is a dance fit for the pandemic. Initially, the dancers were able to learn the phrases individually, and now, if someone tests positive, there is no need to cancel a performance.
But there’s also something about the dance, in its structure and tone, that corresponds to recent stages of pandemic life among the fortunate: the way it keeps changing as that C note continues to jingle, the sense of time moving forward, even when it stands still, the need for cheerful colors. For better and worse, it’s a dance of the moment.
Sasha Waltz & Guests
See you Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; bam.org.