|
It's not often that an artist in America has the leisure to hone a piece of work. John Kelly premièred his electrifying modern masque based on the Orpheus myth 10 years ago in New York, and this week sees the long-awaited revival opening in Portland. Find My Way Home places the story of Orpheus in early 20th-century America, with the contemporary always present in spirit. The action is placed in a Depression-era metropolis, where Orpheus is a radio crooner, and the Furies swirl in a mad dance marathon. Kelly is a consummate performer, having made his name in a number of different disciplines. He is a visual artist, an accomplished countertenor, a popular cabaret performer and a famous impressionist who has transformed himself into such personalities as Jean Cocteau, Egon Schiele and Joni Mitchell--the latter just seen earlier this week at a benefit for PICA at the Conduit, along with Kelly's own creation, Dagmar Onassis. Find My Way Home is full of striking set pieces. The story begins above ground in a monochromatic world. After the death of his wife, Eurydice, Orpheus descends into the vivid color of the Underworld to retrieve her. Inspired by Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Eurydice, Kelly marries the Baroque with the Modern, creating a stunning tour de force. WW spoke with Kelly last week while he was performing Find My Way Home in Seattle. Willamette Week: How much has Find My Way Home changed? John Kelly: It's grown in terms of the number of people on stage. Originally, there were six dancers and performers, with three singers who stood on the side of the stage. Now the singers have increased to four and are major characters in the action. Aside from that, the set design hasn't changed much, but the choreography has become more dense. In general, the piece is tighter and richer. When we did the piece in '88 I had put it together in four weeks. It was a sketch, but an excellent sketch that suddenly was attracting awards and an audience. I've since had 10 years to think about it, and the sketch is now a mural. Thinking back on the late '80s, at the time that you were developing the piece there seemed to be a sudden surge of interest in Gluck's Orfeo ed Eurydice. There were a number of important productions, one of which helped to establish Joachim Kowalski as a leading countertenor. How much of an influence was this on your work? The reason I wrote my piece was because of Gluck's music. But I'd first heard it in the early '70s in a recording by Maria Callas. In the late '70s, after I left art school, I began lipsyncing Callas' version of Eurydice in angry punk drag, and performed in clubs and bars like the Anvil. Then perhaps you started this reexamination of Orfeo. There does seem to be these periodic surges of interest. My friend Martha Clarke is directing an Orfeo for City Opera this fall. It's funny, I was actually working with her 10 years ago on a project while I was putting this piece together. Now here we are today both doing the same thing. Recently, you've been studying Decroux's corporeal mime technique in Paris. I've deliberately avoided mime up until now, because it's a pretty hateful thing when it's done badly. But I always thought Decroux's techniques were close to modern dance, with his emphasis on the entire body. But another reason for never studying mime was that I assumed I was independently arriving at the same conclusions in the creation of a movement vocabulary. As for silent mime, well, I've never had much of a desire to speak on stage anyway. I suppose if we were living in the '20s, I'd be seeking work as an actor in Hollywood. |
