Spring 2019 Newsletter
(April 2019)
Dear Living Tao friends: It is the month of April, 2019. Spring Greetings!
I am about to depart for my annual Easter Weeks’ European teaching in Bavaria, Switzerland and London. And I feel almost reluctant to leave Middle America where finally, as if overnight, the color of green has appeared when the grass is pushing through brown and gray garden earth; snowdrops suddenly pop out, and daffodils begin to show and actually bloom in the blink of an eye; birds are returning also to partake at the feeders— so far, the squirrels are still unable to find a way to intrude yet, but they will! All in all, a new resurgence of a joyful awareness of Spring is happening!
We are at the end of the 12 animal year cycle in Chinese Zodiac, closing with the symbol of the pig (or wild boar). I am meditating on what I wrote in the invitation for the Easter Week seminarians coming to Winterthur: to think of this year’s gathering as a joining together of our international friends as a Living Tao Family. Yes, We are a Family of Human Beings of all nations, races, colors and spiritual traditions, coming Together to share our humanity and wish to make the World a much better place to live in and to preserve it for our children and their children.
I shared a wonderful concert at the Krannert Center of Performing Arts on February 7th this past winter with the Jupiter String Quartet. It was a very special, joyful and creative experience. Here is an excerpt from the evening’s program:
“When Tai Ji Master Chungliang Al Huang was head of the Oriental Theater Program at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the early 1970s, composer R. Murray Schafer wrote to him after reading Huang’s book Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain: The Essence of Tai Ji. Schafer expressed a wish to study Tai Ji and to discuss the possibility of co-creating “a work which would be somewhere between a workshop and a work of art. That is to say, some element would lead the audience/group through a set of participatory experiences under the direction of a master, while the elements would be in the nature of a performance conducted by a master or a group of professionals. The experiential exercises would lead the participants to a higher appreciation of the created work. I am wondering whether something more complex containing original music and other elements might not be possible?”With their separate busy lives, it took nearly three decades for Huang and Schafer to finally meet as presenter/performers at the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, Oregon, at which time Schafer presented Huang with his String Quartet No. 6, “Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane.” The work was inspired by Schafer’s continuing interest in Tai Ji, borrowing form, structure, and impetus from the series of 108 Tai Ji movements for the quartet.Schafer eagerly urged Huang to connect and collaborate with the Alexander String Quartet, at the time, artists-in-residence at Stanford University. Once again, schedules did not coincide. Another decade passed before Huang connected with the Pacifica String Quartet, then the resident quartet at the University of Illinois School of Music and Krannert Center. Huang shared Schafer’s score and intentions for his String Quartet No. 6, but while mutually interested and excited about this project, the Pacifica Quartet departed for Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and the project was again suspended.
In November of 2015 upon hearing the Jupiter Quartet perform a Bartók cycle, Huang was struck by their communicative power and artistry. After being introduced to the Schafer String Quartet No. 6, they mutually agreed to co-create a program rooted in movement. The Jupiter Quartet suggested pairing the Schafer with music of Debussy, Piazzolla, and Stravinsky, leading to another serendipitous moment for Huang. While still a master’s degree candidate at Bennington College in the early 1960s, Huang had used his Tai Ji expertise to choreograph and dance Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet. Later, while teaching at UCLA’s Dance Department, he had the opportunity to join the School of Fine Arts Committee to host and escort Igor Stravinsky to the Royce Hall stage where he led a segment of The Rite of Spring with conductor Robert Craft coordinating the tour in Los Angeles. Huang remembers the honor and joy of informally performing the Three Pieces for the Maestro Stravinsky at a celebration party in a Brentwood home where the Stravinskys were guests. Synchronicity and small wonders do occur in our lives!”
The process of how we came together, envisioning the final programming, enlisting 5 remarkable dancers* to dance with us—all in all, we were rewarded with spontaneous standing ovation from the audience and a wonderful review. Here is the youtube captured at the Live concert to shareThe concert with the Jupiter String Quarter was part of a 2-year-long celebration of Krannert Center’s 50th Anniversary. My next project for them will be March 28th of 2020, to re-stage Gustav Mahler’s classic masterpiece, “Das Lied von der Erde”, inspired by poetry from Tang Dynasty. I have envisioned it to be a production enhanced with authentic Chinese aesthetics, with the atmospheric ambiance of Chinese landscape paintings. We will incorporate the uniquely special renditions of our own Chen Zhongsen’s colorful watercolors, and my cursive brush calligraphy. Using both to illustrate the poetry. The poetry itself will be sung by two singers— one of them the internationally renowned baritone Nathan Gunn. More to share with you soon as we evolve and develop with this exciting project for next spring.
*Especially gratifying was to be able to invite Living Tao’s own Lisbeth Bagnold to join the dance. Lisbeth danced in my very first choreography ”Phantom Landscape”, based on Tai Ji, performed in the mid 60s for the UCLA Dance Company on the famous Royce Hall Stage. It is a “bookend” Full Circle after 5 decades, to dance together again, this time on the Great Hall stage at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, where Suzanne and I were two of the first artists-in-residence at the inaugural month of the Center in the Spring of 1969.