Word: soloed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...taught music. The subject was a bloody one for schoolgirls: after beguiling the barbarian commander with words and wine, Judith seizes his sword and chops off his head. The score is sumptuous, propelled by the Baroque master's typical unflagging vitality. In this recording both male and female solo roles are sung by women. In the part of the servant Abra, the ease and accuracy of Soprano Ameling's clear shining passage-work-as in the the aria "Armatae face"-complements the noble style of Contralto Finnilä's Judith...
...words point away from the multiple characters and episodic structure of part I to Monk's tightly-compressed solo in part II, away from the discovery of a collective past to the memory of an individual past. Monk roots part I in gesture, part II in song...
Monk begins her solo huddled on a stool--an old, old woman in white leggings and frock. Traveling down a long white cloth, she journeys backwards in time. Her gestures compact layer upon layer of implied meaning. Wide-armed swaying conjures up the image of a little girl dancing to the hypnotic rhythms of her favorite ditty, but suggests too an ancient woman casting nets, sowing grain, soothing a child...
During her solo, Monk's voice moves from full-throated chanting to feathered warbling to splintered wailing. Her last cry evokes the image of an old Eskimo, or ancient squaw, or fairy-tale granny calling the spirits to accompany her passage from her death...
...Tharp's dictum, unearths random scatter. Six female dancers tease the music's rhythm, gliding over and diving under the beat, tearing through its even sounding. At first lost in inward spirals of movement, the six cohere as a group, parody a nightclub act and, later, back Tharp's solo disheveling. Shivers running down their spines, the dancers seem to shed a second skin, as if leaving shreds of themselves behind...