‘Path’ to grace in work of longing and loss
It’s easy to understand why choreographer KT Nelson felt compelled to create a dance to Joby Talbot’s “Path of Miracles.” His 70-minute a cappella work for 17 voices is soaring, heartrending and spectacularly beautiful. Talbot wrote “Path” for the London vocal ensemble Tenebrae in 2005, but he devoted it to the memory of his father, who died that year. The music aches with longing and rumination on the ineffable.
Nelson, the co-artistic director of ODC/Dance, heard the score in 2015 and felt transported. It describes the Camino de Santiago, the ancient Catholic pilgrimage across northern Spain, in four movements using medieval texts as lyrics. Nelson walked the Camino herself, and in “Path” she reinterprets Talbot’s score in her own medium, modern dance, in collaboration with San Francisco vocal group Volti.
“Path” premiered Friday, Feb. 9, at Grace Cathedral as part of Spacious Grace, an annual festival held while the pews are removed and the space is vast and open. The immersive, site-specific work blends ODC’s 11 dancers and 17 Volti singers into an outstanding mixed ensemble, with founding Artistic Director Robert Geary as an embedded conductor.
Starting in the choir, “Path” travels through the cathedral with an audience of just 160 people in tow. (Both nights sold out weeks in advance, and nearly 500 people were wait-listed.) Josie G. Sadan and Mia J. Chong twinned solos undulated with growing urgency as the Volti voices rose in volume and pitch. Men and women moved in sync; Jeremy Bannon-Neches, Lani Yamanaka, Rachel Furst and Natasha Adorlee Johnson embodied the same weightedness in different physiques.
Dancers walked arm in arm with singers and audience members who volunteered prior to the performance. Nelson brought the architecture into play, too, as when a dancer caromed off a step into a diving slide over the cold marble floor. Nelson’s ideas are fresh and inventive, yet the visual element feels chaotic, even distracting.
The small crowd migrated easily to the Chapel of Nativity for the restless second movement. Dancers and singers swarmed through the space, and then the singers receded and left the dancers exposed, splayed on the ground. James Gilmer, Jeremy Smith and Daniel Santos hoisted Tegan Schwab and carried her away, like pilgrims aiding a weary fellow traveler. In a solo, Brandon Freeman dragged a bamboo pole over the limestone with rhythmic scrapes.
As a sonorous bass or angelic soprano walked slowly past, just inches away, a single voice became clarion, and you connected with the heart of Talbot’s music and Nelson’s vision. Stillness might be anathema to a choreographer, but Nelson could put even more trust in it.
The third movement opened with Chong’s solo atop the labyrinth; the simple staging and her breathtaking articulation created a meditative communion with the music. Viewers charted unique routes between five duets, stationed around the cathedral, before convening in the nave for the final movement.
With the audience seated along one side of the cathedral, the main aisle became a semi-proscenium space, and Nelson’s choreography finally found balance. Less intent on going toe-to-toe with the music, it seemed at peace with coexistence. An alto singer stepped out and serenaded a solo dancer, triggering soft undulations with gentle touches to her head and arms. The artists spoke fluently to one other, each in her own language.