"...an expression of reverence and worship."

July 3, 2002 performance reviewed by Connell McGrath

This is a sacred, emotionally charged piece that moved Wednesday’s audience to loud, long, and deserving praise; some in the audience cried. Choreographer Lin Hwai-min created this piece “with great ease” after visiting Budhgaya, the site where Buddha reached enlightenment. Lin says the piece is “a work about practicing asceticism, the river’s mildness, and the quest for quietude.”

photos by Yu Hui-Hung; click to enlarge

The cover of the program includes a poem from the Aitareya Brahmana in which the god Indra urges upon a young man the life of the road: "The feet of the wanderer are like the flower, his soul is growing and reaping the fruit; and all his sins are destroyed by his fatigues in wandering, Therefore wander!" And Cloud Gate’s Songs of the Wanderers embodies that yearning quest of wanderers, the hunger and pain of seeking. It is a highly, and unabashedly, sacred work about the suffering that comes with human desire.

Throughout the 90 minute work, performed without intermission, there is a dancer at the front corner of the stage standing still with hands in prayer position extended in front of him. He does not move the entire time. As he stands there, a stream of rice pours from the ceiling onto his head and hands. Piles and trails of unhulled rice cover the dance space.

The dance is accompanied by plaintive, mournful Georgian folk songs sung by the Rustavi Choir (taped). It is an ensemble piece with very little solo work, and little in the way of what we would characterize as “beautiful” dance. There is much crabbed movement, and expressions of suffering, striving and beseeching (mostly in the direction of the Buddha figure).

The movements are slow, tense, and charged with intense feeling. At times, the dancers would throw the rice in the air making arcing shapes with it in the light on stage. There are a few passages where the dance becomes more dynamic and relational, and these points stand out as moments of dance beauty. Clearly, though, the piece is not about dance beauty, but is an expression of reverence and worship.

Songs of the Wanderers has a peculiar ending that bears discussion. The second-to-last section of the piece, Prayer IV, is more active and exuberant than the rest of the piece, with the dancers leaping and throwing rice. At its end, the company takes a bow and the choreographer comes out to acknowledge the audience’s praise.

At the back of the stage remains a single male dancer with a sort of push broom, waiting. After the company exeunt, he remains, the Georgian chanting continues, and he begins to make a slow spiral in the remaining rice on the stage. He works carefully and without hurry. Meanwhile, most of the audience is exiting the theater! Whether this is a statement on the part of the choreographer is hard to say.

Apparently, this happens at all performances of Songs of the Wanderers, and in our case, only about 1/3 of the audience stayed to watch the section called Finale or the Beginning in which Wu Ching-tao draws a mandala in rice. After the hasty exiters left, a quiet settled on those who remained, and we watched a lovely, quiet ending to the most powerful performance we've seen at Jacob’s Pillow this summer.