Song of Songs is a thing of beauty. It’s a work of profound connection which, without any obvious show of emotion, fills the stage with love.
The show was premiered in the US in 2022, but much reworked for this British premiere; the choreographer Pam Tanowitz began to make it in 2018, after the death of her father Herb. The way she chose to honour him was by studying Jewish dance traditions and absorbing them into her own restrained and delicate style of movement. Nothing in the hour-long course of this great work feels unconsidered; watching it is like seeing molten thought.
Much of its luminous impact springs from the marriage between Tanowitz’s steps and David Lang’s score, which takes images and text from the biblical Song of Songs and weaves them into a pure tapestry of sound for three singers, a viola, cello and percussion. It opens with a recitation of a lover’s qualities, all prefaced by the word “just”: “Just your mouth”, “Just your look” – mingled with a responding list of “ands”. “And my beloved”, “And my own vinegar”, “And my mother’s sons”.
As the words pierce the air, Maile Okamura dances a gentle, introspective solo, full of pauses, arms extended in sharp lines, little runs on her heels, swaying runs and walks. She’s joined by Melissa Toogood, her long skirt gleaming with iridescent green, shaping the space with fast, pattering steps, delicate wriggles of her pointed foot. When the other dancers file on, they greet Okamura with upturned palms, arms bent at the elbow, touching briefly.
It’s one of the movements repeated throughout the piece; another sees the dancers fold their arms across their bodies, in a soft hug. They are dancing in a space designed by Harriet Jung, Clifton Taylor, Reid Bartelme and Tanowitz, which is at once contemporary – raised blue platforms, hanging blinds – and timeless, both delineated and porous. There’s a strong sense of geometry broken as dancers curve their arms through the strips of white, or dance pensively in the darkness at the rear of the space.
All the time, Tanowitz creates invisible skeins of movement that reach across the stage, creating bonds between the dancers even when they are far apart. They circle one another, forming long lines, poised groups. In an utterly wondrous section, Toogood and Zachary Gonder dance a long duet while the soprano Sarah Brailey sings. The steps are mainly upwards, stretched arabesques, sharp, quick jumps, except that Toogood’s body sometimes seems to collapse in on itself. They barely touch, yet they watch each other constantly, illuminated by one another’s gaze. At the close, she beats her hand against her chest, as if unlocking some deeply hidden feeling.
The entire piece is like that, creating a mystical atmosphere, holding emotion tight, wrapping you in its sense of itself. It’s a wonder.
Tanowitz’s mastery, nurtured by her residency at the Fisher centre at Bard college, is the result of long years of work. In the Barbican Pit, as part of this year’s Dance Umbrella, Greek choreographer Ioanna Paraskevopoulou feels like a talent at the start of a voyage of discovery. In MOS, which she performs with Georgios Kotsifakis, she mingles the art of the foley artist with live dance to create a shifting pattern of images and sound.
In one section, the dancers provide soundtracks to classic movies playing on a tiny monitor that only they can fully see; in another they tap a relentless rhythm that envelopes them in sound. Fred Astaire and Jane Powell dance in Royal Wedding, unwatched, on a TV at the side. It’s intriguing but slightly underwhelming, as if the real piece is still waiting to emerge.
