CHOREOGRAPHER’S NOTES
Interview with Graeme Murphy (Friday 20 March 1998), from the Program
What is the genesis of this new version of Salome?
I first had to think seriously about Salome as a myth when I directed the Richard Strauss opera for The Australian Opera in 1993. When you do a new version of an existing work, you have to think of as many fresh ways of reinventing it as possible, so it doesn’t look like all the versions before, so I looked at lots of different ways of treating the story. The biggest problem with an opera version of Salome is that you rarely get an opera singer for the title role who can also dance. So maybe it was back then that I was subconsciously thinking how wonderful it would be to do the story in dance. After the opera was over, I didn’t think of it again until last year on tour in Germany when I watching Josef Brown dancing on stage in Free Radicals and all of a sudden realised that he is a dead ringer for John the Baptist. Then, having found that link, it became all-consuming because the rest of the characters kept jumping out of the Company at me. Michael Askill was touring with us, so I talked to him about it on the spot. We were both really excited because we had been feeling an enormous sadness because the tour of Free Radicals was coming to an end and my next work planned was Ikon, which used a recorded score. We didn’t want to let go of the live element of Free Radicals – but at the same time not just do Free Radicals Numbers 2. 3, 4, 5…
What happened once you had the idea?
I rushed out and called up Leigh Small (General Manager] and told her Ikon was cancelled. We’d already done a press announcement about it, but Ikon was only a name at that stage, so we thought, “Well, we can change if it we want.” So we did!
How did the influences on the work start building? Did Michael immediately say “I hear Turkish drums!”?
No. I think the first thing we talked about was the design and instruments -that everything in the production should have a musical element. The set should look musical, Josef should sing, there should be huge gongs everywhere. Then we talked Islamic. Middle Eastern, world music-ish. and talked about it not being bare bones percussion but having a fuller, more symphonic sound.
The set design has a definite spidery feel.
I think it’s wonderful that Salome dangles from underbelly of the spider and weaves her web of trickery to get what she wants.
In your production of the Strauss opera, you envisioned the characters as caged birds. With this production, again there is a cage motif. Is that to do with the characters being trapped by their obsessions?
It is that, but also it’s about the paranoia of the king who fears everybody and so ends up living in a caged environment in order to retain the illusion of freedom, which is so ironic. People who end up living in their beautiful mansions with 500 security guards and electric fences – there is something interesting about these paranoid people enclosing themselves.
Why do you think people have such a fascination with this story, especially in this century?
It’s not so very different from the old story of someone falling in love with their local priest – the desire for the unattainable. You see people sometimes who are so in love with someone that they would rather kill them than let them out of their love net. I like the philosophy from the Wilde play, that Salome loves John the Baptist so much that if she can’t have him no-one will… or she’ll just have some of him. I love the fact it’s not a beautifully tied up story – the moral is, at best, ambiguous.
One of your spins on the character has her coming on stage as a dazed-looking virgin, whereas Wilde’s Salome starts off as something of a spoilt brat.
It comes back to the question of whether you can love someone at first sight Can a voice or a shadow make you love someone? And the answer is yes because falling in love is spontaneous and illogical. Someone who’s falling in love is really caught on an avalanche – the person who’s the object of that love is almost irrelevant. A person who is about to fall in love is already very much already out of their own control.
This new work contains a further exploration of Free Radicals’ blurring of boundaries between dancers and musicians, dance and music. Do you see this as a new direction from your body of work?
Yes, but I think it started with Synergy with Synergy rather than Free Radicals because that started the whole percussion thing. I think these types of works represent our chance to be a company of musicians and dancers. When you start developing all these new skills for a particular work, you can’t just let them go when the show’s over. You must explore every area of talent of your dancers because their careers are so short. If you can find and develop other skills that enhance their career then it’s fabulous, because this will all go into their own choreography, their own creativity, and their own musicality beyond their work for this company.
Is the involvement of the dancers in producing the music a unifying thing? Does it assist the on stage dynamics between the performers?
Yes. Often what happens when a dancer is not dancing is that they are downstairs changing or keeping warm off to the side. But in this instance most dancers are on stage all the time so they are obliged to relate to their colleagues and stay involved with what’s happening, which develops a caring feeling. Learning from and supporting your colleagues is a fabulous thing.
Deciding against starting with an existing musical work on CD increases the pressure because the music has to be created as a full length work as well as the choreography. What are the strengths and weaknesses of that?
Strengths are working so closely with Michael, having him at every rehearsal, having him on the ground from the beginning. It means that he can see what’s being done and reinforce something that you’ve done with his music, thereby increasing the power of the moment. The disadvantage is that sometimes in rehearsal, you’re choreographing without music, because it doesn’t exist yet. so you feel like you’re pulling things out of the air just trying to get your ideas across. You don’t have the music there to comfort you and push you on to the next step This can be dry and hard, but at the same time it focuses you on what you re trying to say – sometimes when you’ve got a gorgeous piece of music you end up just flowing with the music, as opposed to reinforcing the idea you are saying to that piece of music. Having said that, with Salome there were some existing pieces of music by the time we started so the dancers had the excitement of hearing the music and being able to go with it. The combination of the two approaches is exciting.
Recently you worked for The Metropolitan Opera in New York, choreographing the opera Samson et Dalila. How does it feel working with new dancers, as opposed to your own familiar ensemble?
It has very different challenges – not only do you have to create the choreography and teach it to the dancers, but you have to teach them style. This company has become very proficient in my style, they know the way I want movement, the fullness and organic quality I require… it makes us very distinctive as a company. When you’ve got a short period with a new company of dancers, a huge amount of time goes into teaching them how to dance the way you want them to.
At the same time it is refreshing to look at other dancers – but there is something sad about making a new work and then leaving it behind after opening night, which is something that happens when you freelance. You wonder how much they will change it and make it different when you ve gone. Whereas with this company I keep riding the work and keep changing it to make it more difficult and exciting, and it keeps growing.
What are the strengths of choreography as a story telling tool?
What you get with choreography is a very emotional rendition of something, a gut translation of emotion. The first thing you have to do when you’re doing a narrative is to establish a character in dance. You have to get a general feel for how the character would move, what their motivation is to get from point A to point B. Then when that character exists, so many different movements arise which can tell you very specific, exciting and intimate things about them. It’s just like in real life, body language is so important and interesting, conveying so much more than words can.