Information Resource Center - Amador Washington

International Writers, Dance Ensemble Meld Words, Music, Movement

“We represent a united nations of writers,” said Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program (IWP), “and we are always looking for connections among readers, writers, audiences and translators.”

The IWP class of 2010 comprised 38 writers, poets and filmmakers from 32 countries, although only a few could have their written pieces included in the dance performance. The collaboration took place at the Strathmore Music Center in Maryland outside Washington, following the writers’ three-month residency program in Iowa. Pieces from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Germany and Venezuela were among ones featured at the Strathmore.

WRITERS AND DANCERS
Since 1967, more than 1,000 writers from 120 countries have attended the IWP at the University of Iowa, which is also home to the Iowa Writers Workshop, considered the premier advanced writing program in the United States. The U.S. Department of State is a major sponsor of the IWP.

This is the second year that the IWP has joined the CityDance Ensemble in an evening of words, music and dance. CityDance, founded in 1996, is a Washington-based professional company with eight full-time dancers from such widely varied backgrounds as the U.S. Julliard School and Russia’s Kirov Academy of Ballet.

With only a brief time in Washington, the writers and dancers had to select words and music and then choreograph a performance piece in a remarkably short period of time. They had little more than a day to prepare in most cases, and in several instances, only several hours.

“It’s quite an experience to translate words onto the stage so quickly,” said Paul Gordon Emerson, CityDance’s artistic director. “It’s a process of knowing and learning in a very quick and unique manner.”

The first piece to be performed was based on a text by Bangladeshi writer Anisul Hoque. It depicted the terror of a mother and child caught in a cyclone from the sea that strikes Sundarban, a vast mangrove forest that stretches along the coast of Bangladesh and India’s West Bengal.

“I wanted to show how the mangrove forest is both eternal but fragile,” said Hoque, who is a newspaper editor and author of more than 60 books. His best known novel, Maa (The Mother), is set during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

In a paper written and delivered in Iowa, Hoque tells the story of an older, established writer who visits a young writer in the hospital and tells him that he must get well because he is not an ordinary man. “An ordinary person has five fingers,” he says, “but you have six in your right hand. The sixth finger is your pen.”

Hoque concludes his essay, “I write not with my sixth finger, but with the first one, my pen, the pen that I have been given to express the dreams and reality of millions.”

WRITINGS AND PERFORMANCES
The collaborative performances use a creative process that is more than creating movement to each written phrase, but one of being inspired by images and working in parallel with the words, CityDance choreographer Christopher Morgan said.

“It is a nerve-racking but exciting opportunity,” he said about creating a dance to lotus-flower images of peace and tranquility from a poem by Jin Renshun, a writer of Korean background from China:

• The lotus stays the same
• The mirror stays the same
• My face in the mirror
• Every day
• Changes nine hundred and sixty times.

Not surprisingly, the writers and short dance performances varied widely in theme and subject. One number evoked a Maori folk tale about the conflict between two godlike, volcanic mountains, as retold by New Zealand children’s and young adult author David Hill.

“We tried to bring out its elemental energy,” said CityDance’s Emerson. Hill’s wry comment: “I didn’t realize I’d written such a good story.”

Another piece was based on a chapter from a novel by Indonesian writer Andrea Hirata. It tells the story of a village with only nine students, desperately hoping for a 10th so that they can qualify for a teacher.

For the intense, fragmented images of German writer Anja Kampmann’s poem, “Knife Light,” choreographer Christopher Morgan rehearsed in a darkened room where he could experiment with using a knife to reflect light and shadow.

With both “Knife Light,” and Venezuelan writer Beverly Perez Rego’s poem “Escurana,” the writers lent their own voices to the performances by reading portions of their works aloud in their original languages, German and Spanish.

Emerson expressed the hope that, in future years, IWP and CityDance could take their collaboration to a new level and, with more preparation time, move from the workshop to the concert hall.

“We had such exquisite pieces of writing,” Emerson said after the performance. “They had an imagination and depth that could have taken us to grand opera for every one of them.”

THE IOWA EXPERIENCE
The IWP participants had frequent opportunities for public readings and discussions during their program at the University of Iowa. The writers presented papers on literature and the writing process at the Iowa City Public Library, and read from their work at the Prairie Lights Bookstore, one of the best-known literary bookstores in the United States.

They also had opportunities to meet upcoming and established American writers at receptions and discussions held at Shambaugh House, IWP’s home at the university.

For the informal film series called IWP Cinematheque, the writers themselves selected the films and conducted discussions about them. Anisul Hoque presented the 2009 Bangladeshi film 3rd Person Singular, and Iranian writer and filmmaker Farangis Siaphour showed a 2004 Iranian feature film Turtles Can Fly.

From Washington, the writers traveled to New York City for several days before returning to their home countries.

The International Writing Program is open to new and established writers, whether poets, fiction writers, dramatists, or non-fiction writers. They must have published at least one book, however, and be fluent enough in English to profit from their time in Iowa.

The program’s website has more information.