Lester Bowie and Dianne McIntyre mix up a jazz-n'-dance stew
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 24) -- You would be hard-pressed to find two people better suited to combining the arts of modern choreography and improvisational music than Dianne McIntyre and Lester Bowie.

McIntyre has made a career of collaborating with composers and musicians. For 16 years she directed Sounds in Motion, an international touring company of dancers and musicians. Her collaborators along the way have included Olu Dara, Don Pullen, Max Roach, Cecil Taylor and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

On his own and with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the avant-garde jazz group of which he is a co-founder, trumpeter/composer Lester Bowie has for decades incorporated visual, theatrical and spoken-word elements into his concerts, pretty much reimagining what it means to be a musician.

Thus, in a summer season that is emphasizing cross-disciplinary collaborations between jazz and dance -- as opposed to "jazz-dance," which is an entirely separate category of movement unto itself, with little or no connection to improvisational jazz music -- it comes as little surprise to find McIntyre and Bowie creating a new work together at Jacob's Pillow in Becket.

The two cutting-edge artists are presenting the first fruits of their collaboration, a work-in-progress called "The Invincible Flower," tonight at 8 and Saturday and Sunday at 5 at the Doris Duke Studio Theatre. The piece, for which McIntyre was awarded a National Dance Project Award through the New England Foundation for the Arts, will receive its official world premiere next spring in Minneapolis. This weekend's program will also include a performance by Bowie's 10- piece ensemble, Brass Fantasy [see below], and a premiere of McIntyre's new solo piece, "Willow Song," set to recorded music based on African-American spirituals. For more info call 413-243-0745 or visit www.jacobspillow.org on the Internet.

In back-to-back phone interviews a few weeks ago from their respective homes, McIntyre and Bowie spoke about their unique creative collaboration and the particular challenges and opportunities it presents.

"We're all just one ensemble working together," said Bowie, affectionately nicknamed "the Cootie Williams of the avant-garde" for his playful blending of classic and modern styles and techniques. "This is a real collaboration. It's not like I'm playing the music and they've got to go count out steps to it."

McIntyre agreed, saying, "The composer is there from the beginning, and we create the dynamics and the flow of everything together. So the music was already aware of the dance and the dance supports the music. It's a true collaboration that way."

The creative process began when the two groups were in residence for a week at Jacob's Pillow last May. "It was fantastic, such a relaxed atmosphere where nobody had to run home to do this or that or get here or there on time," said McIntyre, who has also choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble.

With a video camera running, McIntyre and Bowie would talk over ideas, and one of them would begin the compositional process. "It could be that he'd start with an idea with his musicians, or just with him playing the trumpet, or a rhythm that he set up with the drums," said McIntyre. "And as soon as I hear that it gives me ideas. I start moving, or giving movement to the dancers.

"When we're working with a live composition like this, the dancers have to be very fast, because at first I don't break things down. They just come and I pass things onto them. Then, in turn, Lester sees what we're doing and it gives him an idea what else to do with the music. And whatever else he does, then we take that someplace else. So it's like a conversation that becomes compositional."

When a modern jazz ensemble plays a number, typically a theme is stated once or twice and then a soloist plays an improvised section atop a set of predetermined chord changes. More advanced or experimental groups such as Bowie's engage in group improvisation, which requires greater listening skills and a deeper sense of group identity or familiarity.

In much the same way, McIntyre and Bowie have left sections of their dance open for in-the-moment improvisation or dialogue between the musicians and the dancers.

"Dianne has picked dancers who can improvise, who can listen to a piece of music and find inspiration from it and make some sort of music of their own," said Bowie. "In this way, the piece can be in constant growth and it can be different every night."

While Bowie's musicians are accustomed to such improvisation -- their main challenge in this case is to play with their eyes open so they can see and communicate with the dancers -- this sort of unscripted movement pushes McIntyre's crew to the limits.

"The thing that is most difficult for some dancers is that they have become very accustomed to performing everything exactly as they have been taught," said McIntyre, who has also choreographed extensively for theater, TV and film, most recently on the upcoming movie version of "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. "So it's really a mental thing, rather than physical, to allow themselves to let go and move spontaneously where the spontaneity doesn't look like mush."

As an outgrowth of their conversations about their respective creative pursuits, "The Invincible Flower" doesn't have a text per se, but the two have sketched out a short verse which hints at their concerns. "Invincible flower....the dance/Invincible flower....the music/Fragile in its fullness,/fleeting in time.../Your fragrance and beauty/can bolster the languid heart and insure victory in an instant./Invincible flower....ahhh."

Explains Bowie, "The beauty of the art still survives regardless of all the pitfalls and obstacles it has to go through. We're still able to create even though we've been at this for thirty or forty years without proper recognition. But we're still creating and we're still here. That's mostly what this is about."

LESTER BOWIE'S BRASS FANTASY

Lester Bowie describes his current ensemble, the 10-piece Brass Fantasy -- which will be heard on its own as well as in collaboration with Dianne McIntyre in this weekend's program at Jacob's Pillow -- as "an extension of the brass tradition, incorporating the brass choir, the New Orleans brass band and the European brass ensemble....It's about extending the parameters of the brass ensemble, the technical aspects of the instruments themselves as well as the whole concept of the ensemble."

Bowie calls the music the group plays "avant-pop," which is also the name of one of four albums by him and the group, the others being "The Great Pretender," "All the Magic!/The One and Only" and "I Only Have Eyes for You," all on the ECM label.

The music they contain is a dynamic, innovative mixture of popular tunes ("It's Howdy Doody Time," Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill," Willie Nelson's "Crazy") reimagined for brass ensemble and more original, experimental compositions featuring group improvisation, in both cases skirting genre and era. New Orleans polyphony rubs up against '60s- style free-jazz with ease, as do traditional African music, marches, spirituals and modern rhythm and blues -- or, as one piece declares aptly in its title, "Miles Davis Meets Donald Duck." All of it, in any case, is filtered through the uniquely visionary, searing and comic sensibility of Lester Bowie.

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 31, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]