REVIEW
‘Dances Around
the World’ leaves
audience breathless
When was the last time you danced a furiant, a dumka or, for that matter, even a waltz?
Not recently, for most of us, and yet our bodies still respond to their music. The exuberant, visceral joy of dancing lingers in the music long after the dances themselves have faded.
Closing the 2002-2003 season, Maestro Samuel Wong and the Honolulu Symphony presented a variety of music inspired by dance in a concert titled "Dances Around the World."
Unfortunately, the "World" on Friday night shrank considerably.
The featured soloist, tap dancer Charles Teo, of Hong Kong, was not granted his visa in time, which meant that the main piece, Concerto for Tap Dancer by American Morton Gould, had to be canceled.
The cancellation caused palpable disappointment but is sadly not unusual these days. Orchestras across America are frantically juggling schedules as increasingly stringent security measures delay or deny work visas for visiting artists.
Friday's remaining program included Dvorak's "Slavonic Dances," Kodaly's "Dances of Galanta," Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" and Ravel's "La Valse," all European dances by European composers.
There was, however, one surprise feature: the winner of a fund-raising bid to conduct the symphony. Guest conductor Ken Robbins admirably accompanied the orchestra in an enthusiastic rendition of Offenbach (no need to spoil the surprise by giving the title; it's familiar even among the cartoon set).
Actually, Robbins managed quite well, setting most tempos and even giving several real cues in addition to the after-the-fact "thank you" cues of most amateurs. It was, as one patron put it, "good fun."
Throughout the program, but especially in the Dvorak and Kodaly sets, Wong adopted a looser, more improvisatory style that lay somewhere between "authentic folk/gypsy" and "symphony orchestra."
The result was less polished in terms of intonation and ensemble but caught the flavor and raucous excitement of the dances. Toes tapped surreptitiously below seats and delighted laughter was frequent.
All of the dances featured stirring solos, but the most remarkable were those by clarinetist Scott Anderson in the Kodaly and principal violinist Ignace Jang in the Saint-Saens. Anderson's quasi-improvisatory line entwined seductively around and through the orchestra, while Jang's leapt out with riveting intensity.
The final piece of the evening, Ravel's "La Valse," a political commentary composed at the end of World War I, was easily the most fascinating.
Ravel's conjured memory of a genteel waltz, symbol of Old Europe and the Austro-Hungarian empire, slowly disintegrated into "le grotesque" in a way only the early 20th-century French could do -- at once alluring and repulsive. Dissonant realities erupted repeatedly through the waltz's facade of beauty, finally culminating in an apocalyptic parody of a Viennese ball.
Dance music -- nationalistic but universally appealing, entertaining but not trivial, passionate but not serious -- captures the joy of living in a way no other music does. Movement inhabits its rhythms and voices its melodies so that just listening leaves us breathless.