For a contemporary dance troupe, Attack Theatre has long had an unusual commitment to original music, performed live at its shows. But its latest production, “Behind Ourself Concealed,” is a first: The music the troupe will dance to is a full album’s worth of new chamber music, two of whose six short pieces were nominated for a 2023 Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition.
The show is a co-presentation with Chamber Music Pittsburgh. Its roots lay in clarinetist Tasha Warren and cellist Dave Eggar’s desire to open the chamber-music repertoire to fresh contemporary voices – new “stories,” as they put it. While the project was conceived before the pandemic, the key grant came through just in time to make this a pandemic project for the composers and musicians.
“We were really looking at this question in classical music for ourselves, and also for our students, of how do we expand the repertoire for our instruments and give ourselves and our students narratives that we feel are more relevant today, exciting and engaging, and really make the audience think,” said Eggar, himself a Grammy nominee and long-time Attack Theatre collaborator who’s worked with artists including Tony Bennett, Frank Ocean and Amy Winehouse.
The album, “Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed” – the quote is from Emily Dickinson – features compositions by Cuban Grammy winner Paquito D’Rivera; Native-American and African-American vocalist Martha Redbone; Haitian flutist Nathalie Joachim; jazz violinist Meg Okura; multi-instrumentalist Cornelius Boots; and jazz pianist Pascal LeBoeuf.
The recorded works were performed by Eggar and Warren. D’Rivera’s “African Tales” and LeBoeuf’s “Snapshots” were the Grammy nominees.
Attack co-artistic director Michele de la Reza attended the live premiere of the music from the album, in April 2021, at Michigan State University, where Warren teaches. The music inspired her to think in images, and that inspired the idea of dance work.
She and co-artistic director Peter Kope choreographed the show, working with featured dancers Lydia Clinton, Miranda Nichols, Ethan Gwynn, Isabella Bergamin, and Sarah Zielinski.
“Each piece is inspired by a memory, an experience from a singular dancer, but it is expressed through the whole ensemble, so we’ve kind of amplified it,” said de la Reza.
Referencing language from Dickinson’s poem, de la Reza said most of the show evokes “these kind of hidden chambers and passageways inside the mind, inside the memory, what is concealed as it begins to be expressed throughout this performance.”
The music will be performed live by Eggar, on cello; Warren, on clarinet; and Okura, on violin. At the weekend’s first two performances, D’Rivera will join the ensemble and will also perform a new composition written especially for the occasion.
“It’s a very exciting thing to be a part of, to see that something that was just an idea for creating new pieces has inspired a whole new art form to express through that music,” said Warren.
“Behind Ourself Concealed” receives three performances Fri., Feb. 24, through Sun., Feb. 26, at Attack Theatre Studios, in Lawrenceville. More information is here.
