| CONTENTS Introduction
WTH = W. Thomas Huyck CM = Christopher Moore |
22 - Joffrey Ballet - TrinityWTH: Now, we don't have the exact dates here, but we were talking about performances with the Joffrey Ballet of a piece called Trinity which was performed a number of times apparently. CM: I'm trying to remember when the first Chicago performance of Trinity took place, but as the Joffrey developed a major Chicago season and then went on to have both a winter/spring season and a summer season at Ravinia, Trinity continued to reappear. I think the first time that Trinity was staged, there were four or five or six performances of it; but in subsequent years, there were four or five performances at the Auditorium Theater in each season. WTH: Now, what sort of a piece was that and how did it use a children's choir? CM: Well, Trinity was kind of a "Hair" ballet. That is, it was an expression in modern dance, in contemporary dance styles, of the culture post-Woodstock. And it had a lot of exuberant dancing, especially exuberant male dancing. But it had some very delightful partner dancing, as well. But also circle dancing. Because the final theme of Trinity -- the whole corps de ballet comes on with candles and, as the lights on the stage dim, this design of candles is left and the music quiets to a giant percussive thumping and, on the final thumping, Holder, a great several-foot giant of a man, put down the last candle and strode off the stage to the beat of the drum and you were left with the stage full of candles -- of oversized votive lights. Well, it was an amazing piece that, with all its exuberance, it celebrated life, coupling and community...and whatever else. The second movement of this had a kind of Latin chant in modern melodic dress. The ballet is scored for orchestra and rock band, and a group of singing boys. It's the second movement in which the boys sing. WTH: Who is the composer? CM: I'm trying to remember, and I don't know. I'm trying to remember the credits on that. It's a British product musically, I think. The ballet, of course, was a Gerald Arpino triumph as far as choreography goes. But the choir was contacted the first time that Joffrey was going to do this and we prepared a group of boys --and in fact we had boys taking turns so that we could share among all those who were ready and give many people a chance to see it. WTH: These were high voice boys? CM: Yes, these were sopranos. And we also got the privilege of rehearsing with Joffrey, but -- you know, getting some back-stage experience with the company. This continued at the Auditorium and at Ravinia over a long period of years, and there was a break in it and then Trinity was revived again and we were in on the revival. So there was probably a decade through most of which there were Trinity performances. WTH: Now, how large a group of singers were at each performance? CM: Generally six or eight boys. It was determined not so much by vocal musical considerations as by how many bodies you could gather around the microphones in that pit in the midst of all the other instruments, including the rock band, that had to be assembled for this. WTH: They were down in the orchestra pit, out of sight of the audience? CM: Right. They did their singing from the orchestra pit and then, at the end, they would come charging up and Christian Holder would dance them across the front of the stage in the curtain call sort of thing. I don't know that that was done the first time, but by the second series of performances we were doing, that was worked out as a curtain call. They got in on the curtain call. They were taken up on the stage for the curtain calls. |