DANIEL TOBIAS

March 21, 2021

Hello. 

The tenth anniversary of my collaboration with Eryc Taylor Dance fell on the year of the greatest global tragedy of modern times. 2.25 million people died of the Covid 19 virus in 2020. What was to have been a celebration of ten years of creative collaboration, friendship, and accomplishment modulated necessarily to a mission with a greater imperative than we ever could have anticipated. 

Let me be blunt… 

If all we did in 2020 were fall to our knees and pray, we would have failed as artists. If all we did in 2020 were stream HBO Max and Netflix and wait for a vaccine, we would have failed as artists. If all we did in 2020 were whine about the loss of venues and audiences, we would have failed as artists. In times of crisis, it is our obligation as artists to get to work. To push through obstacles. To find a way. So when Eryc Taylor called me in May of 2020 to ask me to compose music to tell the stories of six dancers isolated by the quarantine in a project called “Uncharted Territory,” I heard his battle cry.

The first order of business was to decide the scope of this project. 

Over the last ten years, Eryc and I have developed a process. He gets charged by a vision and translates it to me using words like “fire,” “make me cry,” “gestalt,” “epic,” “explosive,” or “intimate.” I’ll take his vision and process it through my own prism. I’ll ask myself questions like: “What is the musical scope of this project?” “Do I compose for orchestra or digital instruments?” “Does he want a chamber music feeling like our past work, Song for Cello and Piano, or something massive like our EARTH series?” “Do I lean toward tonal music or lean toward dissonant abstraction?” Above all else, the most important question for me to ask myself is this, “What is the emotional secret coursing underneath each movement?” 

Some composers are guided by the need to impress academia. Let’s see...how do I proceed without incurring the wrath of those in the system? The teacher from whom I learned the most (the late great composer Stanley Wolfe who taught at Juilliard for 50 years) used to warn me about some of his colleagues and many students who composed “paper music” - densely cerebral stuff that looks more impressive on paper than sounds to the ear. I admit to a duality in me that can be impressed by scholastic agendas while simultaneously never finding it terribly aspirational. Like a painting that looks fab in an obscure museum wing you visit once. But, you know, once. Perhaps because I was raised in a very religious household as a very closeted kid along with my straight identical twin brother, or perhaps because I studied and taught the Meisner technique of acting for ten years, but the quest to unearth buried emotions remains more compelling than any other pursuit. I pursue it in everything I write: plays, books, musical theater, as well as the music I write for Eryc Taylor. Without this quest, how do I know exactly what for the climax of a French horn solo? How do I know if I want a cello to play straight tone or tremolo? How do I musically support a dancer beyond merely providing a metronomic beat? 

Therefore, the narrative of each dancer became very important. As artists, we know that no creation is divorced from the creator. This especially applies to modern dancers, who aren’t truncated by tradition and prescribed “correctness.” Over the last decade, I’ve observed that when choreographing, modern dancers rely on the crashing together of emotional synapsis, physical abilities, and deep psychological impulses to express themselves - all in harmony or deliberate dissonance with the music. Inevitably, I always become invested in what isn’t being expressed even more than what is being expressed. As I watched the gestures each dancer filmed before my arrival on “Uncharted Territories,” and as I read their journals describing what they were dancing, I asked myself questions like: “What is Eryc not telling me in this one specific moment?” “What might Chris not even be able to tell himself at this moment?” “What is the truth that Nicole’s dance is really dancing toward?” “What frightens AJ the most that he’s not revealing outwardly?” “Why does this specific gesture in her kitchen energize Alex so much?” “If I applied this melody on top of Taylor’s chair-balancing gesture, would Taylor feel the gesture even deeper?” I’ll reveal a secret great artists already know: the questions inspire more than the answer.

Movement 1: Contagion Variations

The second order of business was to create a musical setting for these stories to exist in. “Movement 1, Contagion Variations,” is 9 minutes of music divided into four necessary sections: The Spread, The Panic, Grief, and Vigilance. Remember how we watched on our screens the novel coronavirus spread from Wuhan across the globe, into our own countries, then our own states, then our own cities, then down the block, and then into our own buildings? Remember how we felt? It was so inhumane and, to me, inhuman. For The Spread, I knew this section needed to be purely digital creations to capture the virus's insidiousness. I couldn’t even tell you what key this section is in. Its composition was ruled by a creepy, flesh-crawling feeling whose only objective was to crescendo poco a poco. I did finally introduce tubas and trombones at the end so that your speakers would rumble as the Covid 19 breaches your apartment. I mean my apartment. I mean our mental sanctuary.

Even more importantly, the more digital The Spread was, the more human Grief would feel. For the Grief section, I composed a duet for one of the most humanly expressive instruments in the orchestra, the clarinet, and the most soul-wrenching instruments in the orchestra, the French horn. Each can only produce sounds by inhaling and exhaling - aptly appropriate for a nation overwhelmed with Covid Patients and short of ventilators. They also sound exquisite together and in counterpoint.

Movement 2: Dark City

The first piece I composed for Alex was “Distancia.” But I could tell from Alex’s response she needed something very different. This prompted a very personal and, to me, a very profound private conversation with Alex. She revealed the true subtext behind her characters’ story and her real experiences behind the subtext. The conversation was so intimate and truthful that even writing this paragraph makes my fingers tremble. When we ended our Zoom call, I knew I had work to do. I knew musically and emotionally I had to go to a dark place I hadn’t known since I was 30 - a time when my life was upended. Darkness was expressed by muted trumpets and sliding amplified nylon guitars. Relentlessness was represented by setting the meter in 3/4 time, a rhythm that resists stasis by its nature. Fixation was expressed through repeated statements in the electric guitars. High violin harmonics represented spiritual desperation. And here’s where my pursuit of what Alex did not say comes into play. The climax represents the triumph of a hero; not the succumbing of a victim. I knew in my gut I felt Alex spoke of a woman who pushes through adversity and survives. To reflect this, I composed a rising cello line that led to the trombones' glissando restating the guitar’s melody in triple forte, with the violins in parallel two octaves above. I remember bursting into tears after finishing the climax because it managed to capture something profound, epic, and unique to Alex’s story. And it sounded like nothing I’d ever heard in any other piece of music. The result of all of this was “Dark City” - a movement whose journey felt more serendipitous than deliberate.

Movement 5: Distancia

None of this robs from the beauty of the original “Distancia” - a movement Eryc, fortunately, got very excited about when he first heard it. “Distancia” is, perhaps, the least musically ambitious of all six movements, but for a very deliberate reason. Once in a while, a composer comes across a short musical passage that feels complete unto itself and yet contains enough pathos that the listener can hear it over and over without tiring of it. I call this the “Golden Set of Notes.” Once stated, the composer may vary it by adding a counterpoint, set it in a different octave, set it in a different key, change the instrument playing it, or let each statement grow little by little. But the composer’s main goal is to get out of its way and let the statement speak for itself. Think of Pachabel’s “Canon in D” or the Lento section of Henryk Gorecki’s “Symphony No. 3.” In “Distancia,” I found a Golden Set I knew I did not want to obscure with ambitious harmonies and superfluous textures. The Golden Set repeats six times, each time colored just a little differently. The guitar hands the climax to the horns, with the violins in a lush counterpoint. Ultimately, I feel it’s the simplicity of “Distancia” that boroughs straight into the heart. To me, the pathos captured in “Distancia” drifts in the emotional waves of every one of Pedro Almodovar's movies, or Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.” By the way, I call B.S. when composers contemptuously say they could have written Gorecki’s “Symphony No.3” in ten minutes. It sold more than a million copies and counting. Believe me, if they could have, they would have. Anyway, Mr. Amodovar and Mr. Cuaron, if you find yourself shopping for a composer...

Movement 3: Path

If you hate “Path,” it’s Chris’s fault.

When I first Zoomed my friend Chris to discuss his gestures and his narrative, here’s what excited me: he was the only dancer brave enough to discuss the temptation of sex with strangers during the pandemic. To many, sexual encounters with strangers are one of the perks of living in New York City, yet this perk was decimated by necessary social distancing. Yes, it’s…um…something Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity never discuss. The way Chris described his character’s carnal temptations felt like the excitement gay New Yorkers used to feel when we’d go to Limelight or Twilo in the ‘90s.

Here’s what discouraged me: Chris also described mysticism, danger, narcissism, and sadness - any one of which I could have composed an entire eight minutes movement around. I tried to get Chris to narrow the breadth of his dance so that I could figure out some sensible structure for the music. 

Then I had an epiphany. (Here’s where humility as a composer is pretty damned important.) The suspense of wandering down a path that veers from sadness to danger to excitement to pleasure and back to danger - without ever seeing what’s around the corner - is exactly what could make Chris’ journey unconventionally exciting! Not knowing what’s next became the very element to structure this piece around. High contrast. Sudden jumps.

For Chris, I knew my usual techniques as an orchestrator wasn’t going to suffice. I stole from sounds I heard at Twilight - drums, electronic washes, guitars with strangely titled pedals, and instruments whose names I didn’t even recognize. For a radical contrast, I composed a sly melody that captured that meandering feeling of walking through the Rambles in Central Park or the woods between the Pines and Cherry Grove on Fire Island (every gay man has, and they’re lying if they say they haven’t). I went into the quietest place in my apartment, away from the noise of Hell’s Kitchen…my bathroom…and hummed into a microphone. I put reverb on the humming and accompanied it with strings. When I finished “Path,” I took a deep breath, emailed it, and told myself Eryc and Chris are either going to love it or hate it. Eryc immediately threw superlatives at it. Whew. In “Path,” I went to extremes in the music because Chris went to extremes in his dancing. I remain excited to see what Chris does with it.

Movement 4: Bahay ni Lola (Grandmother’s House) 

The most striking image of AJ’s gestures was of him dancing tribally behind a roaring fire as he conjured memories of his Philippine grandparents. Immediately, two questions needed to be investigated: “What were the memories he was conjuring?” And more importantly, “Why did he need to conjure them?” After a Zoom conversation with AJ, I realized, of all the dancers, AJ’s subtext was the most unacknowledged by his journaling and his movements. Unearthing it became one of the most surprising pleasures for me as a composer in my “Uncharted Territory” journey. Please watch Florante Aguilar’s documentary “Harana” about his quest to discover a traditional Pinoy genre of serenade called Harana. I’m part Philippine, though not raised in Pinoy culture in any way. I don’t know if genetics played a role, but I was moved by the documentary enough to compose a tribute to Harana for the first half of AJ’s movement. Haranas were sung in the family courtyard to guitars, absent of electronics. So I took away the metronome and played the guitar of my Harana free of rhythmic strictness. Rubato is the speeding up and slowing down of the tempo according to the emotion of the moment. I’ve implemented rubato in several sections of Uncharted Territory to emphasize the humanness of the experience, including “Pandemic Variations,” “Nurse’s Rhapsody,” and the Harana section of “Bahay ni Lola.” I also gave part of the melody to a bamboo pan flute called Fomana Flauta. Bamboo instruments of all kinds used to be a staple in traditional Pinoy music. This specific sound is inspired by Jose Perugach, who plays the Fomana Flauta in Times Square's subway station. I also accompanied my Harana Song with a haunting Capiz Shell Wind Chime - something still featured in most Pinoy households. And you will also hear a recording of a Pinoy courtyard family celebration weave in and out of the music. The whole song sets the setting for the dramatic second half of the movement, in which AJ conjures up these memories in a wild, epic, tribal dance. This movement remains very close to my heart.

Movement 6: Nurse’s Rhapsody

“Nurse’s Rhapsody” was my second attempt to compose a piece for Nicole. The first was a purely electronic piece comprised of repeated heart monitor sounds, sirens, traffic, alarms, etc. Nicole nixed it and replied with a list of timestamps detailing what was to happen second to second of a dance she’d already choreographed. She sent me a video of her dance. She danced to no music. I did not understand what connected the series of gestures on my screen. At first, my ego said, “Great. She doesn’t really want a composer. She basically wants a metronome.” So I took a break for a couple of days to regroup. After all, I’d just composed 5 movements in seven months. I felt exhausted and depleted. But, a week later, I re-approached Nicole’s piece. I looked at her face as she danced. There was so much more going on in her face than her detailed list. So much not expressed out loud, and certainly so much more than her journal described. Here was a woman exploding with emotion. Not for the pleasure of it. For the need of it. There was an urgency to Nicole’s dance I’d not noticed before. Suddenly I recalled some cool gestures Nicole filmed in a basement…and wham. Her routine felt powerful given the context of a buttoned-down woman retreating to her basement to release all the pent-up anger, sadness, and energy of the day. Fictionally, this movement would be about a nurse who oversaw the successful and unsuccessful treatment of Covid 19 patients. Non-fictionally, this movement would be about Nicole and….and personal stuff she may or may not agree with me to be true. Regardless, I had my engine for this movement. This had to be a rhapsody. I knew that a minor chord moving to a minor chord a whole step away would be the musical motive that anchored the rhapsody. I also knew that two contrasting moods would be at play: a deliberately static repetition of a single note (a heart monitor) versus an explosion of chord changes underneath a rapid-fire melody. I composed a dense piano section that I had to practice and practice before recording - mainly because I hadn’t played to performance level since my early twenties. And, yes, “Nurse’s Rhapsody” followed Nicole’s list of timestamps almost exactly. Almost. She danced certain gestures that were just too awesome to ignore. I just had to force her to repeat them, or slow them down, or underscore them. To argue my case, I edited a version of her dance to fit “Nurse’s Rhapsody.” It gave Eryc the chills, and that was a good sign. We’ll see how Nicole takes to it. Collaboration is always beautifully but torturously suspenseful.

I maintain a theory that the thrust behind all great art is Love. Art made of Anger is self-indulgent, while Art made of Love is benevolent if not purely altruistic. Art made of Anger leaves nothing to be discovered because its message must always, it seems, be underscored in red, while Art made of Love protects its subjects in a cradle of layers one must unpeel to reveal its subject. Art made of Anger is so tediously conclusive, while Art made of Love asks questions as it seeks to discover a more profound beauty within its subject. Art made of Anger is art in form only, beating its subject with sticks. But I don’t feel it’s art in its spirit. I was able to probe deeply into all six dancers because they are rooted in love as humans and as artists. Love for the dance community. Love of Earth. Love for their own understanding of spirituality. And, strongest of all, love for the other company members. The more rooted in love the dancers were, the more rooted in love my music would be…and therefore, the more I could musically explore the darkness that tried to bury it. This became the DNA and connective fabric of all six movements of music in “Uncharted Territory.” 

Did I get it right? I don’t know. I feel I did. Any time an artist hands art to another artist, more questions get asked as more truth is explored – and the art evolves. But to me, this evolution is the important thing. This is Uncharted Territory. I do know “Uncharted Territory” focused all of us, activated us, and switched on a light during a dark time. The world premiere of Eryc Taylor Dance’s “Uncharted Territory” will be on March 21st. When you see and hear it, I hope you feel how “Uncharted Territory” is a fanfare to the forward charging spirit of all the artists who remained in New York during the pandemic, as well as an intimate set of stories of 6 dancers who insist on the survival of Love with a capital L.

Yours,

Daniel Tobias