Four performances of the reconstructed Homage to Mahler were given at Rutgers University 's New Theater November 20-23, 1997. Dancers also performed the first Lied at College Dance Day on November 20 for a high school audience. Melanie, Kelly, Cleo, Paula, Courtney, Liza, Elisabeth and Michelle tell of challenges reconstructing Homage to Mahler in their Dancers' Narrative
For the Rutgers reconstruction, the solo originally danced by Gitelman was performed by Kimberly Gibilisco, a member of Murray Louis and Nikolais Dance Company and a BFA graduate of Rutgers' Mason Gross School of the Arts. She was joined in the duet by Alberto Del Saz, rehearsal director of Murray Louis and Nikolais Dance Company. The pair had performed the excerpts in the past and brought to them expert technique and a deep understanding of the scope of music and choreography.
(photo: Rachel Evers)
Holm did not choreograph the fifth song of Mahler's cycle and in 1976 Jeanne Piland sang to an empty stage. For the 1997 reconstruction Gitelman choreographed the fifth Lied. Following Holm's method she abstracted movement from images in the text. To turbulent music a matriarchal figure dances angrily because children have been allowed to go out in a storm. Then music and text modulate into a heart rending lullaby, "...they rest/As in their mother's, their mother's house."
(photos: Alan Goldsmith)As a segue into the new solo, three dancers remaining on stage after the fourth Lied responded to the turbulent music and text, " In such a weather, in such a storm," by running, twisting, falling and rising before they mounted the ramp and disappeared as had the other four dancers. After the solo, danced powerfully by Lorn MacDougal, Gibilisco and Del Saz returned for a poignant trio before they exited down stage left as they had after their duet. MacDougal turned to them as she gestured toward the distant high light into which the seven young people had disappeared.
