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Agon: A Musical/Choreographic AnalysisAuthor(s): Stephanie JordanSource: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, (Autumn, 1993), pp. 1-12Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Congress on Research in DanceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1478549Accessed: 09/08/2008 21:36

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Agon: A Musical/Choreographic Analysis

Stephanie Jordan

Agon has often been cited as a key composer/choreographer collaboration, and its choreographer, George Balanchine, himself considered it "the most perfect work" to come out of his creative relationship with composer Igor Stravinsky (1). It is surprising, therefore, that so little has been written regard- ing the details of the interaction of music and dance. Most writers have concentrated on the dance or on the musical aspects of Agon, or have made only broad generalizations about its musical/choreographic structure.

In this article, I begin the analysis of structural relationships between music and dance with the main focus on rhythm. This is perhaps an obvious starting point for analysis, but it seems an especially important one, given the rhythmic complexity of the musical score and Balanchine's acknowledgement of the rhythmic lead that music provided for him (2). It was Stravinsky's rhythmic style that Balanchine so often referred to when admiring the composer's work (3). In Agon, Balanchine seems to have been far less concerned with responding to pitch structure than to the rhythmic content of the music.

Like Balanchine, I choose to apply the concept of rhythm broadly, to cover large as well as small scale time organiza- tions of Agon. One aspect of rhythm refers to the pattern and continuity of events-event defined as the basic unit of duration: in music, a note or chord; in dance, a step or gesture timed according to each movement impulse (4). Other rhyth- mic categories addressed are accent, metrical structure, tempo (rate of pulse), and speed (velocity). Finally, rhythm also applies to the organization of material in Agon-to the group- ing of events into units and ultimately, to the large structure and its division into sections.

The sources analyzed for this article span the period of time from the 1957 premiere of Agon to just after Balanchine's death in 1983: four video recordings of New York City Ballet performances (in 1960, 1973, 1982, and 1983) and two La- banotation scores, one written during the making of the piece and one completed in 1987 after a 1985 staging (5). These sources demonstrate that the work has changed very little since 1957-much less, in fact, than many other Balanchine works. Although there are some changes in details, two Labanotation scores indicate remarkably similar dance counts. Therefore, this analysis refers to a work with an unusually

persistent identity. The overall musical structure of Agon is analyzed here as

sixteen dances grouped into five sections, with the dances in the second and third sections based on seventeenth-century dance forms (see Figure 1). Balanchine's choreography closely follows this musical structure. There is no silent break between the musical movements in the opening and conclud- ing sections, and casts for these separate ensemble move- ments overlap on stage accordingly. At the end of the work, the Coda repeats exactly the music of the opening Pas de Quatre. Balanchine created new choreography for the first part of this Coda and continued to use the twelve dancers from the previous Four Trios dance. However, responding to the idea of musical recapitulation, he proceeded to repeat the corresponding choreography of the opening dance for the four men alone.

Most of the major musical divisions within each of Stravinsky's dances are marked choreographically by a change of either dance material or of patterning of dancers within the stage space. There is a more subtle point to be made here about the nature of these structural divisions. With the exception of the Pas de Deux, which, in many ways, stands apart from the rest of Agon, Stravinsky's music is constructed as a series of formal cells or blocks. These occur without breaks between them, contrasting in material and sometimes also in meter. The opening Pas de Quatre, for instance, begins with a fanfare (bars 1-6), stops short for a rumbling passage for lower strings under a shrill clarinet and oboe chord (bars 7-9), which is in turn interrupted by a more gentle passage (bars 10-13). All these are discrete cells that recur, sometimes in varied form, later in the movement: for instance, the fanfare in bars 14-19 and 30-34; the rumbling passage in bars 20-22 and 35-38; the gentle harp, mandoline, and piano passage in bars 23-25. Balanchine choreographed according to the same plan, as critic Edwin Denby describes:

[The different units of material] fit like the stones of a mosaic.... Each is distinct, you see the cut between; and you see that the cut between them does not interrupt the dance impetus. (6)

Stephanie Jordan holds a PhD in Dance and Music. She has taught in Europe and North America, both practical and theoretical aspects of dance. She is author of Striding Out: Aspects of Contemporary and New Dance in Britain (1992) and co-editor of Par}allel Lines. Media Repsresentations of Danc e (1993). Currently she is Director of Dance Studies at the Roehampton Institute, London, and is conducting research for a book on music and ballet.

Dance Research Journal 25/2 (Fall 1993) 1

Musical Structure

Section 1 Pas de Quatre Double Pas de Quatre Triple Pas de Quatre

Section 2-First Pas de Trois Prelude Saraband-Step Gailliard Coda

Section 3-Second Pas de Trois Interlude (variation of Prelude) Bransle Simple Bransle Gay Bransle Double (Bransle de Poitou)

Section 4 Interlude (variation of Prelude) Pas de Deux

Section 5 Four Duos Four Trios (Coda-recapitulation of opening Pas de Quatre)

Dancers

4 men 8 women 4 men/8 women

1 man/2 women 1 man 2 women 1 man/2 women

2 men/1 woman 2 men 1 woman 2 men/1 woman

1 man/1 woman 1 man/1 woman

4 men/4 women 4 men/8 women

4 men/8 women

FIGURE 1 Structural Layout of Agon

Perhaps this structuring principle is the reason Balanchine described Agon as "more tight ... than usual" (7).

Examining small-scale details of Agon, we find numerous instances of "music visualization," a direct response to musi- cal accent and pattern of events, sometimes with an additional response to pitch contour. The term "music visualization" is borrowed from Ruth St. Denis. Although Balanchine's work is entirely different in style from the Denishawn repertory, the term is a useful one for describing the principle of an imitative relationship between music and dance (8). Often, these moments of visualization occur as punctuating points, a stac- cato musical/choreographic gesture marking the end of a dance or section of a dance. We see examples at the end of the Coda, Bransle Double, Pas de Deux, and three times during the Bransle Simple. In the Bransle Simple, which is in ABA form, the moments of visualization emphasize the end of the two outer A sections. To the same sustained, accented chord (bars 287 and 308), the first time, the men extend an arm towards each other; the second time, they take up a standing position side by side and fold their arms. Then, at the very end, in a surprise extra gesture, again replicating a musical accent, they strike a witty, arm-in-arm sculptural pose, the real ending immediately after the "false" one. In the Double Pas de Quatre, one of these moments of shared accents marks the beginning of a new section (bar 75). To a wide-pitched pizzicato chord, the two female soloists "spark" from two feet in a sissonne with both legs bent in attitude, and thus begin the

next phrase. The accent is the moment in the air. It is as if this movement ignites their colleagues behind them to follow immediately with the same movement, this time pointing up the deep pizzicato D of the double basses.

Balanchine gives particular stress to the arrival of the final Coda, a key point of recapitulation which matches the opening music of Agon. There are four repeated, heavily orchestrated chords, with strings playing pizzicato under the trumpet fan- fare (bars 561-563), and to each chord, Balanchine has cho- reographed a dance accent: an entrechat for the eight women, a pirouette for the four men, a sissonne for the women, and finally a dragging step for the men. Again, the accents for the women occur with the height of the jump, the thrust out of the dancing group. Interestingly, the timing of four separate dance accents in precise correspondence with the music is much clearer in the original 1957 Labanotation score than in the later one. Balanchine treats the occasion of recapitulation as especially important for emphasis, and logically so. There are both musical and choreographic devices which invite the audience to anticipate this recapitulation. Immediately pre- ceding the Coda, a horn fanfare sounds like a distant recollec- tion of the opening trumpet fanfare; Balanchine brings the four men in a line out front, with movements accentuating the ball of the foot and the heel, recalling images from the opening male Pas de Quatre.

Some instances of music visualization seem to arise out of nowhere, as startling, yet casual, moments, small highlights soon forgotten. However, many of the clearest examples emphasize the musical structure, thus highlighting a musical/ choreographic event. Balanchine appears to have reasoned carefully his occasions for this. In the central section of the Gailliarde, there is a passage in 6/4 meter with the bars subdivided (by dotted bar-lines) into three units of two quar- ter-notes each (Figure 2). Bar 174 is an exception, consisting of two units of three quarter-notes each. Balanchine recog- nizes the change at bar 174. The women perform two releve steps with the working legs unfolding forward; each time a plie on beat 1, a releve and hold on beats 2 and 3. This reflects the change to the 3/4 sub-meter, the pitch contour, and the syncopated event pattern within this bar (the emphasis is on the second beat of each group of three beats, the G in the melody line). However, here the musical sub-meter is clearer in the musical score than it is to the ear. A sense of duple organization continues. After all, this was the framework for the same melodic motif when it first appeared (bars 172-173). Balanchine's obvious commitment to the shift of meter here suggests his direct knowledge of the written musical score. For the musical repeat of this whole passage, he again ac- knowledges the metrical change, although this time he does so without visualizing the music.

Four castanet bars in the Bransle Gay provide another example of visualization with a structural purpose. In them, the castanet ostinato rhythm "J J is suddenly exposed, alone. These bars are the moments of transition, clarifying phrase structure and also offering moments of simplicity and respite within a rhythmically complex dance. For the first two (bars 310 and 315), the female dancer simply takes two steps; for the other two (bars 320 and 335), she gestures playfully, arms alternating up and down in a precise imitation of the

2 Dance Research Journal 25/2 (Fall 1993)

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musical rhythmic pattern. Some instances of music visualization are so subtle that the

musical/choreographic relationships did not emerge in my early viewings of the dance. There are moments created by individual dancers' interpretations of the music. Other subtle moments arise out of a sequential relationship between musi- cal and dance gesture-the dance anticipates or echoes a musical feature. This latter device creates tension-the effect of music and dance racing or chasing each other, or movement can seem like a late reverberation of a sound feature. In the Coda to the first Pas de Trois, the ironic gigue rhythm articulated by the solo violin from bar 193 has already been "heard" in the dance in the skipping and "soft shoe" steps that begin at bar 187 (Figure 3). In the same trio, there is a striking passage where a series of entrechats springing down the line of dancers (bars 201-202) anticipates four shrill repeated B- flats on the flutes (bars 202-203). Further accented kicks and releves then become echos or reverberations of those high

notes. Another noteworthy example of reverberation occurs in the first canon phrase of the Bransle Simple. A perceived connection between music and dance around the peak of the melody line (bar 283 first trumpet, 284 second trumpet) is initially hard to justify analytically. However, the connection is clarified as soon as the three repeated F-sharps are seen to relate to the dance idea of a phrase based on a series of three turning hops, which also emphasize one level, one series of three hops performed on the left leg and one on the right (Figure 4). These begin on the last beat of bar 283 and are performed at a slower rate than the musical events (although, like the trumpets, in canon), and they continue on into the beginning of bar 285. At first they appear to be a memory of the musical idea; later, they reconnect with a series of repeating G-sharps (bars 284-285). Effects like these, which emerged after repeated viewings of the dance, encourage the notion that, in Agon, music and dance events, though created at different times, do not exist in isolation from each other.

Dance Research Journal 2512 (Fall 1993) 3

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In addition to points of music visualization in Agon, Bal- anchine introduces a variety of other kinds of relationships between music and dance. In terms of metrical structure, Balanchine discovered a wealth of possibilities for musical/ choreographic interaction. Stravinsky's score is already highly complex, with its irregular accenting and shifting meters. There is nearly always a strong sense of driving, underlying pulse, whether or not it is always articulated, and Balanchine reinforces this sense of drive. When the rhythmic pattern is ambiguous or unstressed, steps and gestures articulate pulse and meter, sometimes coinciding with the musical structure, sometimes not. In the Prelude and two Interludes, there is an initial rush of musical activity, the overlapping of parts re-

moving any strong sense of meter. Using short, repeating dance units, Balanchine creates his own clear pulse and independent meter. The opening Pas de Quatre contains an example of a passage in which dance articulates the pulse, but the music does not; against a sustained chord, the dancers mark out the underlying beat plainly in steps and shifts of weight (from the end of bar 6 into bar 8, Figures 5a and 5b). The sound of feet is heard here. Then, in the final Coda, the eight women depart with a leap, accenting a musical rest on the last beat of the bar (bar 602). The pulsed choreographic ending of the Gailliarde is memorable. Two women perform a set of nine gestures to a sustained chord, possibly referring to the nine beats in the musical bar (9).

Balanchine has written that in Stravinsky's music "life goes on within each silence" (10). In Agon, Balanchine often reveals that life, and adds to it, in movement. There are many passages in Agon in which the downbeat itself, a musical rest, is filled in by the choreography. At the very opening of the work, the four men turn around in silence. Understanding the rhythmic style of Agon, Denby perceived this moment, a "soundless whirl," as "a downbeat that starts the action" ( 11). However, there is another half-bar downbeat marked by a sixteenth-note rest which is the actual beginning of the musi- cal score, and this too is articulated in movement by a plie (Figures 5a and 5b). Both Labanotation scores indicate this difficult moment of dance rhythm very clearly, though video sources show that it is not always performed accurately. The silent downbeats in bars 2 and 3 are similarly articulated with plies in the dance (Figures 5a and 5b). By choreographing the downbeat during this section, Balanchine clarifies a highly ambiguous sense of beat and meter. As musicologist Pieter van den Toorn writes:

The two, stressed, off-the-beat (CBF) attacks are unprepared, and likely to be heard as initiating two on- the-beat groupings of four sixteenth notes. The uncer- tainty arises with the trumpet's triplets on the fourth beat of measure 2, which, as a consequence of this alternative, assume an uncertain off-the-beat ap- pearance.... This concealed ambiguity is not subsequently resolved, but hovers on through mea- sure 4. (12)

When the same music returns at the beginning of the final Coda, Balanchine makes no attempt to clarify musical beat and meter. As we have already seen, he choreographs the "off- the-beat attacks," and to highly energetic effect.

There is another noteworthy moment of choreographed downbeat in the Double Pas de Quatre, when the women slip into arabesque in plie and snap their fingers (bar 74, see Illustration 1). This is a significant moment that marks the downbeat rest immediately prior to the musical recapitulation in this dance.

Several of the examples described feature a regular pattern of dance events, each step or gesture indicating a beat, and indeed much of the choreography in Agon was built like this (13). This might seem dull, a surprising fact, since the Agon collaboration is acclaimed for its rhythmic interest. However, with such extraordinarily varied rhythms in the music, addi-

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Dance Research Journal 25/2 (Fall 1993) 7

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ILLUSTRATION 1 The Double Pas de Quatre. (Photograph by Fred Fehl, used with permission.)

tional complexity in the dance movement might have mud- dled the choreography and created insurmountable rhythmic problems for many dancers. Moreover, moving to every beat does not in any way preclude the gradation of accent. Balan- chine takes full advantage of this possibility. There are also jazz-style freedoms in the rhythmic style of the dance: the slightly "offbeat" stepping of the men in bars 5-6 (Figures 5a and 5b) is an early example (14).

Yet the Agon choreography does contain some irregular event patterning. The pattern in the music is unusually regular during the Four Duos-for much of the time a line of simple quarter notes. Against this regularity, Balanchine sets a variety of dance event and accent patterns. Arthur Mitchell recalls that Balanchine deliberately set out to create a varied pattern for his solo variation in the Pas de Deux:

Balanchine was fascinated with rhythms. I had had training in tap and jazz, so we would work out sound patterns, done with syncopation. The steps would come out of the rhythmical accents. (15)

Balanchine's pattern of dance events and accents produces a counterpoint to the music and a complex interlocking of visual and aural systems. The orchestra's articulation of musical rhythm must be clear for this effect to succeed, and the forcefulness of the effect depends on the strength and fre- quency of the conflicting accents.

Balanchine utilizes such counterpoint for expressive pur- poses. Without any special dynamic assertion, the crossings in the Triple Pas de Quatre create a kind of accent (bars 101- 108). The full ensemble is arranged in two parallel lines, one behind the other, and the men and women, a pair at a time, run out of line to exchange places. The moments of departure from the line claim the eye as accents, and the fact that they occur at irregular intervals, without prompting from the mu- sic, creates a sense of surprise.

Balanchine often achieves rhythmic tension by counter-

pointing dance events and accents against those in the music, especially when he introduces a different meter from that of the music. Passages of polymeter are a common feature of the dances in Agon. There are one or two passages in each dance, including the Prelude and two Interludes, where musical meters counter choreographic meters for a few bars. Only two dances do not include such a passage. Balanchine introduces this device in different ways, although it is usually through repetition in the movement that the impression of a strong, independent dance meter is obtained. In the Pas de Quatre, a passage of 24 simple walks (bar 21-bar 27, beat 1: 24 beats in total) is divided in metrical fashion, a new downbeat felt at each moment the dancers turn into a new direction (16):

dance music (number of walks in each bar) (number of beats in each bar)

7 5 4 4 4 against 4 4 3 4 4 4 1

Elsewhere, Balanchine's ballet steps produce metrical cross-

ing between music and dance. In the second half of the Saraband-Step, the male soloist performs a jumping and turning step combination in four counts (equivalent to two musical beats, 2/4). This is performed four times against three bars of 3/4 in the music (bars 158-160). In the closing section of the Gailliarde, Balanchine introduces counterpoint within the musical bar-lines (bars 181-183). The music is heard most clearly as 3+3+3 beats within each bar of 9/4. Balanchine introduces a 4+5 structure (in a pose in attitude or arabesque combination with transition steps).

The Bransle Gay is an interesting example of metrical counterpointing. A sense of heightened energy or small climax near the end of this dance results from the interplay of musical/choreographic rhythmic organization, which con- tributes significantly to the shape of this little solo. The dancer pulls further and further away from the rhythmic structure of the music as the solo progresses, drawn back to it temporarily during the castanet transition bars. After her first two phrases (bars 310-320), which share the clear, shifting 3/8, 5/16, and 7/16 meters of the music, she establishes her own definite five-beat meter with two repeating units of material (one unit moving sideways across the stage, performed four times, one moving backwards, seen three times, bars 321-327). The music is written in a corresponding 5/16, but it seems far less clearly metered than the dance, and the music and dance accents are independent. In bar 332, the soloist starts a brilliant five-count (5/16) turning sequence, which she per- forms three times, moving directly towards the audience. At this point, she diverges from the musical bar line, establishing metrical counterpoint and creating an unprecedented sense of tension within this solo: the musical bars 332-334 are a repeat of bars 311-313 (7/16, 5/16, 5/16). Finally, in bar 335, this tension is resolved as the soloist simply imitates the castanet ostinato.

The canon device in Agon visually simulates beats in a meter: each stressed movement passing down a line of dancers creates a beat, and the first one in the line, the downbeat. Thus, in the Coda of the first Pas de Trois, the "meter" of three canon passages is three beats to a bar (created by the three dancers), against two beats in the 6/8 musical bar

8 Dance Research Journal 25/2 (Fall 1993)

(bars 201-208, which are repeated in bars 221-228; a different canon passage, bars 234-240). The contrapuntal effect be- tween music and dance is very clear because the dance beats are marked by strong accents: entrechats, leg kicks, sharp releves in attitude, and/or pirouettes. The effect is especially restless in the closing section of the Coda (bars 234-240). This canon begins with the man and then shifts the eye to the right and then to the left as it moves to the women on either side of him.

We have seen so far that Balanchine's rhythms at times visualize Stravinsky's rhythms and at other times counter- point the music. Interestingly, in the Gailliarde, without these devices, the movements draw attention to the musical part- writing, and they bring out the unusual, piquant orchestration. The dance gestures shift between high and low in spatial level. In the first section, the dance accents are usually at a high level-entrechats and releves-and they connect with the syncopated flute and string lines. In the central section, the dancers emphasize a descending three-note pattern in the piano line, again with releves (bars 171-172). Then, the dance accent goes down to low level with plies, marking the two- beat grouping of the music (in bars of 6/4). Here, the mandoline and harp writing seems to emerge more strongly. Rhythmically, the Gailliarde is intriguing. It demonstrates that, although dance steps can be neutral in accent, the music invites the viewer (and perhaps the dancer) into perceiving an accent that is in some way complementary to, or harmonious with, itself.

Balanchine's choreography introduces a further important aspect of musical/choreographic rhythmic structuring which is concerned with speed. Changes in speed of motion con- tribute to the ensemble climax of the piece. The Coda of the Four Trios gradually gathers momentum with double pirou- ettes and a quick five-count series of steps that crosses the musical meter. Then, a rapid half turn upstage and reversal back again leads to a climax of stillness as the entire ensemble freezes in a crouched position. All is still between bars 596 and 598, reflecting, for the first time, the depth of the roaring double basses. The movement up to this point is much faster and more brilliant than the movement for the four men to the same music at the beginning of Agon. The canons (dubbed "Petrushka canons" according to the 1987 Labanotation score) recur from the opening Pas de Quatre, but in presto variation. In addition to this, Balanchine shifts the viewer's eye fre- quently and rapidly in the Coda, more than anywhere else in Agon. In the second Petrushka canon, leg kicks and pirouettes catch the eye as they are performed in canon, taking the eye into the center, darting it to one side, to the opposite side, and in towards center again (bars 592-595). Against any musical suggestion, Balanchine invented new choreography in the Coda, and with a very different attitude to speed.

So far, we have observed Balanchine's handling of musical/ choreographic rhythmic structure by discussing the detail of separate dances. But his procedures also have implications for the larger shape of Agon. It is possible to perceive sections of relative tension and relaxation, the least tension perhaps in the solo dances and male and female duets, a peak of tension on either side of the Pas de Deux, in the Bransle Double, and then through to the Coda. The use of space, group organization,

and counterpoint support this contour. The tension surrounding the Pas de Deux only emphasizes

its unique qualities within the work. Here, for the first time, the tempo is adagio. After a long opening section which sets the tone of the duet, short, faster episodes follow, including solo variations, and finally another adagio (Doppio Lento). The structure of the whole Pas de Deux is as follows:

section metronome marking

Adagio -=112 (bar 451 piu lento iJ =86)

A tempo

Male variation

Female variation

no. of bars orchestration

411-451

-=1 12 452-462

S =126 463-472

J =126 473-483

Male refrain , =126

Coda

Doppio Lento

484-494

J =112 495-503

JP=112 504-411

strings

strings

horns and piano

flutes and strings

horns, flute and piano

strings, trumpet, trombone and piano

cello and violin solo, mandoline and harp

The dance speed reflects the musical tempo, except at a tempo (bars 452-462), where the dance speed becomes allegro.

Another major difference in the Pas de Deux is the breath rhythm, manifest in the long sustained lines of intertwining and stretching motion. The lines are peppered with staccato gestures, but these do not override the main legato approach. Arthur Mitchell referred to the Adagio as "one long, long, long, long breath" (17). The music too is structured differ- ently here: no longer a series of jaggedly contrasting motoric formal cells, but a number of fragile short gestures-some bounded by rests, or passages of a gradual piling up of sound. For the first time, Stravinsky introduces the lyrical qualities of the strings. The effect of the change cannot be overestimated. There have been earlier hints of breath rhythm in the dance (sustained slow motion in the second half of the Double Pas de Quatre and at the end of the Prelude, first Interlude, and Bransle Double), but its impact is not stressed until the Pas de Deux.

The performance timing also seems more personal in the Adagio, as if the dancers provide their own continuity, being in touch with the music but no longer disciplined by its pulse (18). Thus, Denby noted that "you hear the music gasp and fail, while the two dancers move ahead confidently across the

Dance Research Journal 25/2 (Fall 1993) 9

open void" (19). The dancers are literally more in charge of their own timing. There seems to be general agreement that the adagio sections are basically without dance counts (20), and the incompatibility between dance scores for the passages that are counted suggests that performance latitude was given for this part of the piece. Lack of counts means that, though the dance still coordinates carefully with the music, there are new leeways for rhythmic detail and interpretation. The biting, aphoristic statements that penetrate the two adagios (Adagio and Doppio Lento) bring back the driving pulse, although, oddly, these statements prove more rhythmically erratic between interpretations than any other section of the work. They only highlight further the return to adagio (Doppio Lento) for the close of the Pas de Deux, to even more sustained, drawn-out dance timing. Here, apart from a final gesture of passionate embrace, there are no staccato dance moments at all. Stravinsky's collaborator, the conductor and musicologist Robert Craft, referred to the Doppio Lento as the high point of the Agon score (21). Perhaps Balanchine too felt that this section was special in some way, saving for it his most sustained use of breath rhythm.

The Pas de Deux contains a series of powerful images: the man helping the woman reach her head up and back to meet her foot, he suddenly dropping stretched out at her feet while supporting her risky arabesque, or the woman pitching over the kneeling man to rest her head on his breast. However, just as important to the organization of this dance are the moments of connection between choreography and music. Some stac- cato, some more sustained, these moments punctuate the Pas de Deux like a series of highlights, structuring it rhythmically without diminishing the sense of continuity. These moments are important in renewing our aural and visual awareness. Some of them, it seems, are choreographed, present in most or all interpretations; some seem to be more personal, "found" by a dancer; others appear to have emerged during the history of the piece. And, for those passages of the music that are repeated, new choreography reveals new aspects of the music.

Examples of choreographed connections between music and dance are as follows: deliberate gestures of linked arms and hands at the beginning, mirroring the event pattern and

pitch contour of the music (bar 414, Figure 6); the staccato isolated gestures of the woman in penche with her leg around the man's shoulder (see Illustration 2: they release the right hand-clasp, she touches the floor with her free hand, he releases his left hand to take his arm back high-following the rhythm and pitch contour of the last three notes of bar 424, Figure 7); or, breathing with a sustained chord, the traveling lift and lowering to pointe down the diagonal, the woman's legs in second position (bars 427-429). Balanchine chooses not to repeat the latter sustained image when the same musical

passage repeats, encouraging us to hear the music differently

FIGURE 6

ILLUSTRATION 2 The Pas de Deux, first Adagio. (Unattributed photograph, Dance Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Used with permission.)

the second time round. At the end of the Pas de Deux, the woman prepares to extend her leg backwards into arabesque, stepping on to pointe and holding the ankle of her raised leg (bars 443-445). The potentially difficult movement is pin- pointed by a gentle gesture on the cellos and double basses. Perhaps this moment is one to which Denby was referring when he wrote:

The mutual first tremor of an uncertain supported balance is so isolated musically it becomes a dance movement. (22)

When the man stretches flat, he scoots clockwise with his feet in order to turn the woman on pointe, accompanied by an anxious, stuttering violin tremolo (bars 447-478). This action

FIGURE 7

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to the violin sound seems to be one of the clearest instances of Balanchine's avowed response to Stravinsky's timbres (23).

In the 1960 film, Diana Adams exemplifies the performer's latitude in responding personally to the music. Her high attitude as she wraps her leg around the man's shoulders is timed to the B-flat peak of the violin motif (bar 423, Figure 7; the movement culminates in the position in Illustration 2). It is as if her movement, including the pirouette that precedes the attitude, "sings" with the musical motif. Other later recorded interpretations do not draw attention to the motif contour in the same way. Otherwise, Adams' performance seems to be one of the leanest, the least charged with personal, rhythmic highlights of all the interpretations consulted. On the other hand, Suzanne Farrell, in the 1982 video, finds a multitude of possibilities for musical/choreographic connection, details of pitch contour and dynamic difference-some gently referred to, others more directly emphasized (24). Even the action of extending her leg upward in order to step out of the man's arms "sounds" like the rise to apizzicato A-flat at the end of bar 424 (the repeat of this bar-Figure 7). Perhaps this kind of response is what Arlene Croce alluded to when she wrote of an overaccented, overpunctuated Agon, Farrell (and her part- ner Peter Martins) "broadcasting their effects" (25). But there is another way of viewing this. Farrell underscores the Doppio Lento in her approach. She introduces big contrasts and dramatizes the even longer rhythmic lines of the final Doppio Lento: here she draws out her backbend in counter- pull with Martins, and rolls her torso powerfully towards her standing leg to extend the action of her final penche arabesque (26). For Farrell, breath evolves and deepens. It is as if she

too sees the Doppio Lento as a "high point." Some musical/choreographic connections in Agon might

well have been introduced during the later history of the piece. In the 1983 broadcast, Mel Tomlinson exaggerates the letting go of Heather Watts' ankle to a pizzicato cello C (bar 441). The exaggeration is documented in the 1987 Labanotation score. In the other interpretations consulted, the action is achieved more simply. Likewise at the end of the opening Adagio, Farrell and Watts lower their left arms in a gesture that reflects the falling two-note musical motif (harmonics passing from cello to double bass, bar 451). Allegra Kent (in the 1973 broadcast) draws her arm upward. In the 1960 film, Adams makes no gesture at all.

Analysis reveals the range of rhythmic interplay between music and dance in Agon: dance both visualizing and coun- terpointing music, whether the dialogue be between event pattern, accents, or meter. Analysis also reveals a major contrast in style between the Pas de Deux and the rest of the work. Rhythmic organization plays an important role in determining the contour of the work as a whole as well as ensuring the liveliness of its detail.

It is as if choreography and music mesh together in Agon like interlocking parts in a sophisticated piece of machinery, a rare example of deep interpenetration disciplined by a shared motoric drive. And yet the machine metaphor must be applied sparingly. The excitement of Agon is that shifting and volatile musical/choreographic relationships continually en- liven our visual/aural awareness. Our perceptions constantly challenged, in Agon, the dance virtually begins to sound and music to move (27).

NOTES

1. In Olga Maynard, "Balanchine and Stravinsky: The Glorious Undertaking," Dance Magazine (June, 1972), p. 49.

2. Balanchine, "Marginal notes on the dance," (1951) in Walter Sorell, The Dance Has Many Faces (2nd edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 102.

3. Balanchine in interview by Louis Botto in Intellectual Digest (June, 1972) reprinted in Selma J. Cohen, ed. Dance as a Theatre Art (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1974), p. 190. Balanchine discusses Stravinsky's rhythmic style in "The Dance Element in Stravinsky's music" (1947) in Minna Led- erman ed., Stravinsky in the Theatre (New York: Pelegrini & Cudahy, 1949), pp. 75-76.

4. The rhythmic categories introduced here are drawn from the author's dissertation Music as Structural Basis in the Choreography of Doris Humphrey, with Reference to Humphrey's Use ofMusic Visualization Techniques andMusical/ Choreographic Counterpoint and to the Historical Context of Her Work (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Lon- don, Goldsmiths' College, 1986), pp. 65-66.

5. The four video recordings are the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation broadcast, 1960; the Zweiter Deutsche Fernse- hen broadcast, 1973; New York City Ballet company video, 1982; and the Public Broadcasting Station broadcast, 1983. The 1957 Labanotation score was written by a team from the Dance Notation Bureau. Ann Hutchinson Guest led the team and was assisted by Muriel Topaz, Billie Mahoney, Margaret Abbie, Myrna Shedlin, and Allan Miles. The 1987 score was written by Virginia Doris, as taught by New York City Ballet dancer Sara Leland to Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in 1985.

6. Edwin Denby, "Three Sides of Agon" (1959) in Dance Writings (London: Dance Books, 1986), p. 461.

7. Balanchine, Stravinsky and the Dance (New York: The Dance Collection of the New York Public Library, 1962), p. 58.

8. Ruth St. Denis coined the term "music visualization" c. 1917; see "Music Visualization," The Denishawn Magazine, 1/3 (Spring, 1925), pp. 1-7.

9. This is a passage that did change several times over the years. The version described here is Balanchine's final solution.

Dance Research Journal 25/2 (Fall 1993) 11

10. Balanchine, "The Dance Element in Stravinsky's Music," p. 76.

11. Denby, p. 460.

12. Pieter van den Toorn, The Music oflgor Stravinsky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 497-498.

13. Significantly, Ann Hutchinson Guest recalls that Balan- chine's rhythms were simple to notate (interview with the author, May 29, 1992).

14. Stravinsky noted jazz elements in the music too, "traces of blues and boogie-woogie" in the Bransles de Poitou and Simple (see Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and a Diary [London: Faber & Faber, 1968], p. 54).

15. Arthur Mitchell in Burton Taylor, "Dancing Balanchine," Dance Magazine (July, 1983), p. 87.

16. The 1987 Labanotation score records the organization of the walks differently. All other sources used (see note 5) agree with the analysis here.

17. Arthur Mitchell in Nancy Reynolds, Repertoiy in Review (New York: The Dial Press, 1977), p. 183. Denby, too, noted the "breath" of "crescendo and decrescendo within the thrust of a move," in "Three Sides of Agon," p. 462.

18. Ann Hutchinson Guest recalls that Balanchine would experiment with maneuvers here to see where they would lead, unbounded by musical structure in these circumstances, while he still established points of connection between music and dance as the Pas de Deux evolved (in interview with the author, May 29, 1992).

19. Denby, p. 463.

20. Evidence is from the two Labanotation scores consulted and from a 1979 Benesh score (notated by Peter Boyes as staged by Brigitte Thom for the Dutch National Ballet); also from the author's interviews (November 15 and August 16, 1991, respectively) with dancers Patricia Neary and Victoria Simon, who now stage Agon.

21. Robert Craft, "Ein Ballett fur zwolf Tanzer," Melos 24/ 10 (October, 1957), pp. 284-288. Also Craft's notes accompa- nying the recording of Agon, CBS 72438, 1966.

22. Denby, p. 462.

23. Balanchine in Lincoln Kirstein, "Balanchine and Stravin- sky: The Glorious Undertaking," Dance Magazine (June 1972), p. 45; Balanchine in Dale Harris, "Balanchine: Work- ing with Stravinsky," Ballet Review (Summer, 1982), p. 22.

24. The video captures one performance. Farrell has stressed how, in performance, she always wanted to respond afresh to music (interview with the author, September 21, 1991).

25. Arlene Croce, "Other Verdi Variations," (1979) in Going to the Dance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 153.

26. Darcey Bussell of the Royal Ballet moved her back similarly in performances viewed by this author in 1991.

27. The author would like to thank Rachel Richardson for her helpful comments on the manuscript, and Howard Friend, Jonathan Thrift, and Terry Butcher for their assistance in preparing the music and Labanotation examples.

Excerpts from the Labanotation score of Agon are reprinted with permission of the George Balanchine Trust and the Dance Notation Bureau.

Musical excerpts are reproduced by permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.

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