TIMES UNION // By Tresca Weinstein //
For choreographer Ellen Sinopoli, making a new dance often begins with the music — when she finds a piece of music she loves, the movement comes naturally. So, her first-ever collaboration with the Capital Region ensemble Musicians of Ma’alwyck was a departure, in that the music was chosen for her.
Luckily, the two works selected by the ensemble’s artistic director, Ann-Marie Barker Schwartz, passed the test for Sinopoli.
“When I listen to music, I close my eyes, and if movement phrases come into my brain, then I feel like I can develop something with it,” Sinopoli explained in a recent interview. “When I listened to these two compositions, I could get a sense of the movement in space, and that acted as a germinating seed.”
This weekend, the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company debuts two new dances, set to James Lee III’s “Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet” and Missy Mazzoli’s “Death Valley Junction,” which will be performed live by the Musicians of Ma’alwyck. The program, titled “Celebrated Emblems,” is on stage Friday at 7 p.m. at the Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, and Saturday at 3 p.m. at SUNY-Schenectady.
While Musicians of Ma’alwyck specializes in American music from the 18th and 19th centuries, it has recently expanded its repertoire to include contemporary work, and Schwartz chose two 21st-century compositions for the collaboration. The ensemble will also perform two additional works for the program, by William Jay Sydeman and George Walker. The selections are tied together by themes of American identity, community, history and cultural heritage, Schwartz said.
The Mazzoli piece, from 2010, was inspired by the dancer Marta Becket, who was traveling with her husband when she came across an abandoned opera house in the middle of the California desert, in a tiny town called Death Valley Junction.
“She never left,” Schwartz said. “She revitalized the opera house, and performed there every day, whether she had an audience or not, until she was 89. It’s such an unbelievable, amazing story, and I love the way Missy captures it in her music.”
The composer calls the piece a “sonic depiction” of the harsh, spare desert landscape. In response to that vision, Sinopoli and her dancers created “Dust Devils,” an abstract depiction of the life that moves through this seemingly barren world.
“We explored three components of the environment — the humans who choose to inhabit this space, like Marta Becket, the creatures who have lived there for millennia, and the desert itself,” Sinopoli said. “There are times when these elements are separate from each other and times they come together and are affected by each other.”
The Lee quintet, composed in 2019, draws from historical Indigenous and Black cultures, including the rhythms of Native powwows and Black spirituals.
“There’s a certain primal quality that makes you respond physically to the music in a very strong way,” said Schwartz, who considered becoming a professional ballet dancer before launching a career as a violinist. She founded Musicians of Ma’alwyck in 1999, and the ensemble has been in residence at the Schuyler Mansion in Albany since then; it currently holds a residency at SUNY Schenectady as well. (The other members are Norman Thibodeau, flute; Sten Isachsen, guitar; and André Laurent O’Neil, cello.)
In choreographing to Lee’s music, Sinopoli found an entry point through words and stories.
“The basis of the work comes from the Native population and the African American population, and I didn’t feel that I could address these narratives from that perspective, but I did feel that everyone has narratives, everyone has experiences that influence them,” she said. “I read a lot of fiction, and I keep a journal and write down phrases that I feel are evocative, and every time I start a new piece, I look through these journals. I found a number of phrases that lent themselves to this topic, and I had the dancers choose one or two they were intrigued by as a stepping-off point.”
The work that emerged, “Telling,” braids together individual narratives that cross over one another, interrupt each other and sometimes coalesce into a single larger story. It’s an example, Sinopoli said, of how her dance-making process has evolved over the years — this is the company’s 33rd year in residence at the Egg — to rely increasingly on her dancers’ contributions.
“I turned 80 this year, and my approach to choreography is very different now, because I’m not moving the way I used to move — I can’t fly around the space the way I used to,” she said. “I utilize my dancers’ artistry, their improvisational skills and their ideas a lot more, and when I audition (new dancers), improvisation is a major component.”
While Sinopoli’s company frequently performs to live music, playing for dance is a less common occurrence for the Musicians of Ma’alwyck — and a very special one, Schwartz says.
“There’s this undefinable energy when you’re working with another artistic medium — you can feel the dancers’ reaction to what you’re doing and it’s almost like you’re providing the catalyst for their movement,” she said. “It’s a fascinating process, and the sum is more than the parts — together it’s an even more electrifying experience.”