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Of Myths and Mothers
| Article
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18094 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1990 |
2,058 Words |
| Author
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Maya Wallach
Maya Wallach is a dance writer, critic, and photographer
currently based in Los Angeles |
The Mother of Three Sons is an opera with all but one singer banished form the stage. It is post-modern dance compressed into telling a story. It is the psychological study of a destructive mother portrayed through the conventions of African mythology. It is a German and American collaboration directed by Bill T. Jones that premiered last May at Munich's Biennial for New Music Theater.
From conception to performance, the production is marked by the same unflinching honesty and invectiveness that brought Jones international acclaim as a postmodern dancer and choreographer. Using raw power from the untempered vision of its many collaborators, The Mother of Three Sons proves both provocative and disturbing.
Poet and short-story author Ann T. Greene wrote the libretto, moved not just by having been reared by a destructive mother but by realizing she could become one herself. The pain and anger of her own life are given a large-than-life frame by her setting the tale in an Africa of legend, where the forces of nature are given human form and godlike power.
Disappointing Birth
The opera begins as the Mother (mezzo-soprano Ruby Hinds) bears a daughter instead of the son she desires and orders her slave to leave the infant in the desert. The River, reigning figure in African cosmology and manifested by Jones and a flood of dancers, comes to her and offers to give her three sons. Over-joyed, the Mother celebrates her pregnancy with drink, maiming her unborn children. The first is born without ears, the second without eyes, and the last without a tongue. The Mother is horrified and rejects them, blaming the River for their defects, but when he accepts them with open arms she changes her mind and spitefully takes them away from him.
The story devolves into a nightmare as the first son is killed by the rejected infant daughter, who has been reincarnated as a mournful Falling Bird. The second son is transformed into a panther. He tries to rape the Mother but is shot in the back by the third son. The Mother returns to the River to plead for good, true sons and is drowned.
Jazz violin imporovisationalist Leroy Jenkins has composed a score that reflects both the chaos of Greene's story and the elegant simplicity of her language. The Mother's drowning is amplified almost unbearably in a thunderous finale of drums and umbels. The "Song of
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