“It is not often that we presenters get to be part of a work’s production,” commented Pamela Tatge, the director of the Center for the Arts (CFA). But that was exactly what happened with “Off the Beaten Path: A Jazz and Tap Odyssey,” which had its world premiere at the University last Friday, September 5. The work was commissioned by the New England Foundation for the Arts (of which Tatge is a member), a group that usually brings pre-existing performances to college campuses around New England.
Performed by a cast of nine at the CFA Theatre, the “odyssey” began with the reading of an excerpt from Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and then moved into a series of jazz pieces and tap dances designed to track the natural rhythms and cycles of nature.
Despite the title, the show was not entirely built around the intricate tap and jazz pieces. Instead, it relied heavily on readings by the tap dance artist Brenda Bufalino from the work of such naturalists as Henry David Thoreau, Carson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Bufalino herself. The readings were used to varying effects throughout the evening: to clarify the performance to come, to unite the dances, and for their own driving force.
One reading incorporated into the work was Bufalino’s “Blue Heron Flies.” Bufalino began by recording herself reciting the poem into a sampler. As she looped back her recording of the poem, she began to dance, then chant in time to the rhythm of the piece. Soon Bufalino was performing over multiple layers of her own tapping and readings in a remarkably coordinated poetic expression of natural cycles.
Throughout the work it was difficult to lose sight of the purpose of honoring Carson. The dancers moved through the seasons and themes of nature, from the clear, rapid flow of spring through summer’s bright lights and finally into a fall gathering, during which the musicians got up to dance along as well.
Perhaps the strangest moment of the performance came when Josh Hilberman ’88 appeared on stage wearing a chain mail vest, a metal codpiece, and various forms of metal noisemakers across his body. Simultaneously pounding the ground with his feet and on his body with his hands, the metallic sounds produced by Hilberman’s movements perfectly epitomized the coldness of winter. The pounding became not only a warrior’s dance but also a way to keep warm. The small numbers pieced beautiful natural and naturalist scenes together into a collage that told the story of both the seasons changing and, much like Carson’s “Silent Spring,” of the destruction of that peaceful cycle.
In the free information session before the performance, Bufalino, Paul Arslanian and Drika Overton, who have been working together for eight years on three separate projects, discussed the creation of “Off the Beaten Path.” All members of the collaborative artistic group Music and Dance Theatricals, they decided to work on a jazz and dance production that used Carson as a starting point after receiving funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts. They collaborated to explore the general themes of “Silent Spring” using jazz and tap and created visions of birds, storms, weather, and the motion of water.
Bufalino ended the show much like she began it, quoting Rachel Carson.
“There once was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings,” she said as the lights began to dim. “The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards.”
Like everything else about the odyssey, the poems had returned to the point where they had begun, with the tranquil vision of a town living in harmony with nature. This was the message that came out of the performance: that it is not just possible but necessary to live with the amazing and strange world around us.
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