Letter from Rome
Choreographer Brenda Way's Residency at the American Academy
Villa Aurelia at the American Academy in Rome. Photo by Rachel Donadio.
I am at the American Academy ensconced in a tower apartment in the Villa Aurelia on top of Gianiculum Hill – operation central in 1849 for Garibaldi as he fought to organize Italy into a unified concept. I wonder about the idea of actually settling in…I see myself as one of the Tiepolo putti, hanging over the edge of the dome, looking down on the enormity of Rome. I can see the three arches of Constantine out one window, the Michaelangelo façade of what is currently a power station out of another, the park of the Doria Pamphilij and the splendid gardens of the Villa Aurelia out of two others.
Perfectly shaped trees and carved hedge arbors, lemon trees in little square patches of green grass like a checkerboard from Alice in Wonderland. I am always responsive to grids. Art critic Rosalind Krauss once argued for the anti-natural implication and reductive impact of grids in contemporary visual arts. She described the obsession as a limiting trend, but I see and love them everywhere: in the renaissance walls, the cathedral floors, in the paving stones of the cobbled streets, the gardens. I think I am part of an old sensibility indeed.
After a few morning hours in my studio (a 30-feet high, light-filled space just off the entrance of the McKim, a Mead White Villa which is home to the Academy), my husband Henry and I foot it down the hundreds of stone steps and tilting streets of Trastevere to the Villa Farnesina. Built to front the Tiber, its graceful setting now sliced off by the river roadway, it boasts frescoes by Piombo and Rafaello and his school and one beautiful black and white panel that reminds me of a Leonardo’s face. The entrance porch was designed to welcome guests and also serve as a theatrical venue for the villa. The drama and sensuality of this permanent stage set inspires instant choreography of the mind (the nature of which is influenced by all the little pornographic fruit details that the guidebook mentions).
Keenly interested in questions of influence and mentorship, I consider which faces and bodies in this fantastical loggia were by Rafaello himself and which by his “scuola.” Are there form differences? Is it the composition, the color, the values they placed on articulation? I have always made a case for the idea of “insistence” in art-making. Don’t back down. But here I see the musculature too forced in so many figures, the skin tones so dramatically shaded and explicit. The body shapes too regular or protruding abruptly. And then, in contrast, there is the simplicity of three muses over the doorway. Restraint and a lighter touch are clearly distinguishable from the rest…Rafaello.
Back up to the Academy for lunch, albeit slowly, given the millions of steps. The weather has turned warm and a long table is set in the courtyard. The Fellows – all scholars, composers, painters, filmmakers and their families – line up to fill their plates with the amazing fresh vegetable dishes that the Academy kitchen turns out. Alice Waters has made her mark here, too. No longer are Italians dragged to the American table. Henry had run into one of the fellows shelling fava beans earlier this morning in the garden. It seems everyone takes a turn at volunteering in the kitchen. The conversation is lively, no one standing on ceremony before launching into a detailed account of his or her days work or life’s passions. Today I hear from a historian about the poet Martial and his epigrammatic prose in the First century. We discuss the figure of the general reader and other kinds of audiences for his satirical Epigrams. Did Martial think much about accessibility? Very much it seems. The issues endure as well as the forms.
Yesterday I gave my own presentation, Chasing the Unfashionable – a cautionary tale about the seduction of choreographic imperatives. I invoked Morton Feldman, “Unfortunately for most people who pursue art, ideas become their opium, there is not security to be one’s self.” In any case, dance is not the language of the realm here at the Academy and it’s a challenging exercise to tie the different concepts of expertise, primarily classical, to the aesthetic points that I raise. “Did Yvonne Rainer really say no to everything?” Afterwards, I accept an invitation by Kurt Rohde (a Fellow in composition) to get involved with his upcoming puppet opera. My intention to spend the entire time in Rome without the constraints of rehearsal goes out the window.
Having missed the daily open-air market this morning, I resort to a little deli a few minutes down the road for some staples. Three water color paintings by an Academy artist grace the vitrines in front of the store and I am gratified to see passersby and families stop to comment on them. The artist, Meredith McNeal had the insight to arrange and install a Roman Art Exhibit without the help or intervention of curators or civic bureaucracy. (Do-it-yourself)
The afternoon hours I spend listening to music by Jordanian ex-seminarian Saed Haddad, whom I met at Alvin Curran’s last night. Alvin, a warm and enthusiastic composer who used to teach at Mills College, has now moved permanently to Rome. Saed is in residence at the Villa Medici as part of the French Academy program. I see that there is a whole subculture of organized artistry going on here in Rome, from more than 20 countries someone tells me. The communications seem to flow from one constellation to the other with the starlings that dominate the sky in the twilight.
Rehearsal for Kurt’s puppet opera…The cast: two medievalists, a modern Italian scholar, an art history professor, a writer, a chef and a painter. The plot: Romulus and Remus found Rome, duke it out for power. Romulus wins and gets naming rights. I work on blocking.
In the evening, a few of us bolt from dinner which, while still served at long tables, is a rather more formal affair than lunch, and head over to the Medici for a program of films that includes the screening of one of the American Academy fellows, Hisham Bizri. Song for a deaf ear is a perfectly conceived title. He shot it in Super 8 film over the course of three years in Beirut. It concerns the violent death of his close friend and runs in silence until the last few minutes when we hear a layered account of the sounds of their former, normal life. After the screening, we discuss the form of the film but also the necessity of it. The French film that follows feels indulgent by comparison, a work that takes as its subject a fairly recent student demonstration. Program order, I do not need reminding, is key to perception. The French film seemed to be all surface, of slight point of view and even less necessity. These days, the looming questions for me are largely social and I am deeply receptive to Hisham’s urgency. As the charming Frenchman wraps his straightforward little film in an increasingly complex skein of theory, we sneak out to head home. After a short pause at the top of the Spanish steps to soak in the soft evening air and rail a bit about the need for rigor and focus in moderated discussions, we head home, back to the hilltop aerie.
Taking part in this exaggerated dynamic city can hardly feel like normal life to me, but I know it is imprinting itself on the landscape of my imagination.
Brenda Way is founder and artistic director of ODC, a groundbreaking arts institution composed of ODC/Dance, a world-class contemporary dance company; ODC Commons, a five-studio rehearsal and office complex; ODC School, which houses a recreational to professional level dance school; ODC Theater; and The Healthy Dancer Clinic.
Way was invited for a residency at the Academy to serve as a senior advisor to winners of the Rome Prize as well as other members of the Academy community. The Academy, founded in 1894, is a leading center for independent study and advanced research in the fine arts and the humanities for Americans overseas.
.jpg)
