An Unlikely Pairing on Common Ground

John Zorn and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro: Mot Pharan, left, and Chao Socheata performing Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s choreography at the Guggenheim Museum. (Photo: David Goldman for The New York Times)

Music Review | Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and John Zorn

November 27, 2008
By STEVE SMITH
New York Times

To call the collaboration presented at the Guggenheim Museum on Monday night unlikely is to understate the case by an order of magnitude. There was John Zorn, a chameleonic New York composer whose work has fruitfully touched on everything from chamber music to death metal. And there was Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, an innovative choreographer who has pushed at the boundaries of classical Cambodian dance with her Khmer Arts Academy in California.

That these two creative forces were meant to find common ground in the Song of Songs, the Old Testament book whose heady, amorous poetry is viewed by some as an allegory for the relationship between God and Israel, made it that much harder to imagine this intersection.

Mr. Zorn has devoted much of his work, especially during the last decade, to exploring themes of Jewish identity. His “Shir Ha-Shirim,” for an amplified quintet of female singers with female and male narrators, was first performed in February, with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson reading the texts in English. Here, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Jeremy Fogel recited in Hebrew.

During an onstage interview Ms. Cheam Shapiro said she had referred to a Khmer translation of the Song of Songs in conceiving her choreography. Some of her gestures represented words or passages, she said. For others she went with the flow of the music.

You could sense what she meant when paired dancers from the Khmer Arts Ensemble moved together in graceful harmony. Their comforting closeness overcame the courtly severity of their gestures, connecting with Mr. Zorn’s sensual music and the passionate narration. Mostly, though, anyone unversed in Hebrew and the vocabulary of Cambodian dance was at a disadvantage in discerning deeper meanings.

What remained was a gorgeous spectacle of contradictory sensations. Hearing the urgent narration (and watching Mr. Fogel’s emphatic gyrations as he spoke), you wanted to follow his words; meanwhile your focus was dragged away from equally meaningful contributions by the singers and dancers.

And Mr. Zorn’s vocal score warranted attention. Using devices from medieval polyphony and works by Berio, Ligeti, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Mr. Zorn created a complex vocal web that shifted in style from one section to the next, with repeating thematic strands and patterns lending continuity. The Daughters of Jerusalem — Lisa Bielawa, Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer, Kate Mulvihill and Kirsten Sollek — sang with clarity and refinement.

The program opened with selections from Mr. Zorn’s “Sefer Shirim shel Shir Ha-Shirim,” a new collection of short pieces. Melodies styled after Jewish folk music uncurled over seductive lounge-music textures and ostinato rhythms. Openly courting nostalgic exotica, the music had an irresistible charm, particularly when Carol Emanuel’s charismatic harp playing intersected with Kenny Wollesen’s undulating vibraphone chords.