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<\/p>\nThey\u2019ve been at it for hours. Jodi Melnick and Maya Lee-Parritz, both dancers, both choreographers, are in an airy dance studio in downtown Manhattan, feeling their way through a dance passage. Moving close together, they enter and exit each other\u2019s orbit. They keep track of each other in the mirror, communicating every so often in short bursts: \u201cI\u2019ll link up with you here,\u201d or \u201cthere\u2019s a fling-the-arm-thing here.\u201d<\/p>\n
They are in the final weeks of preparing \u201c\u00c1gua Viva,\u201d a dance loosely influenced by a 1973 novel by the Brazilian experimental writer Clarice Lispector. The piece will premiere on Saturday at Hudson Hall, in Hudson, N.Y.<\/p>\n
The dance is both a duet and a layering of solos. Now the two women are independent but complementary entities, now they move in near unison, now in canon. They also move differently \u2014 Lee-Parritz more angular and rhythmic, Melnick more delicate and detailed, almost molecular.<\/p>\n
Melnick, 59, has been choreographing on the postmodern dance scene for decades, and has performed with Twyla Tharp, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Trisha Brown, Sara Rudner and others, as well as on her own. She is also a devoted teacher of dance. Lee-Parritz, now 31 and a rising choreographer in her own right, was her student a decade ago at Barnard.<\/p>\n
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Since those Barnard classes, teacher and student have regularly spent time in dance studios around town developing movement. \u201cWe started this practice,\u201d Melnick said in a phone call earlier this summer, \u201cimprovising, sometimes with eyes closed, writing, and talking to each other.\u201d They\u2019ve become artistic partners, engaged in a continuing conversation about dance and life.<\/p>\n
During one of those sessions, the two realized they were both carrying the same book, \u201c\u00c1gua Viva,\u201d by Lispector, who was born in Ukraine and emigrated to Brazil as a toddler in 1922 with her Jewish parents, who had suffered in the pogroms.<\/p>\n
The choreographers were captivated and moved, they said, by the sense of urgency in Lispector\u2019s writing. Lispector writes in \u201c\u00c1gua Viva\u201d that she is \u201ctrying to seize the fourth dimension of this instant-now so fleeting that it\u2019s already gone \u2026 the is<\/em> of the thing.\u201d Melnick and Lee-Parritz\u2019s dance, with its mix of abstraction and precision, delicacy and drive, communicates a similar urgency, an effort to \u201creveal and discover some kind of truth beyond words,\u201d as Melnick said, to show it, give it shape, hold it, and then move on.<\/p>\n In Portuguese, the words \u201c\u00e1gua viva\u201d mean both living water and jellyfish; the novel\u2019s title has also been translated as \u201cStream of Life.\u201d Consciousness was a frequent theme for Lispector, who has been described as a kind of Brazilian Virginia Woolf. \u201cWhat she\u2019s trying to do in all her books, including \u2018\u00c1gua Viva,\u2019 is try to touch the exact moment of life,\u201d Lee-Parritz said, \u201cexactly as it\u2019s happening. You feel that energy.\u201d<\/p>\n It is a feeling that dancers speak of when describing the sensation of the body and mind in performance \u2014 a kind of flow. \u201cIt\u2019s how I feel with dance and with making choreography,\u201d Melnick said. \u201cI can express sensation physically, in the tension and the twist, the reaching of the arm, the jaw coming forward, the eye rolling back. I want you to see it and feel it in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Her words were clearly illustrated in a passage of the dance, a solo for Melnick that the two choreographers developed together. The seed was a series of movement phrases created by Lee-Parritz, which she recorded and then played back for Melnick in extreme slow motion. Melnick then copied the movement, retaining all of the idiosyncratic effects. \u201cI decided to learn it as if it were happening to me that way, in slow motion,\u201d Melnick said. \u201cIt became very internal, very dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n In the solo, she moves in an exaggerated legato, as if swimming through glue. When she reaches away, her eyes follow her hand as it sweeps through the air, her head tilting, face illuminated by an almost rapturous expression. \u201cI\u2019m not an emotive person,\u201d Melnick said, \u201cbut I decided I was just going to go with it.\u201d That quality of physical extremity, in turn, echoes the tone of passages in Lispector\u2019s book. \u201cIn this land of the is-itself I am pure crystalline ecstasy,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n That immersion in the sensation of the moment, or what Lee-Parritz describes as \u201cbursts of sublimity,\u201d is a subtext of the piece, as is the transcendence and duality of beauty. \u201cThis work has a relationship to beauty and form and simplicity,\u201d Lee-Parritz said, \u201cbut with an awareness of decay and ugliness.\u201d<\/p>\n The process through which the two choreographers created the slow-motion passage, trading phrases and then shaping them together, is a perfect example of the fluidity of their collaboration. In the studio they watch and offer suggestions, ask questions, and sometimes even nag. When something wasn\u2019t working in the recent rehearsal, Melnick suggested coming back to it later. Lee-Parritz said dryly, \u201cLet\u2019s talk about it now.\u201d For them, creation is negotiation.<\/p>\n Melnick described their relationship as sister-like; sometimes she feels like the elder sister to Lee-Parritz, she said, \u201cbut the relationship also very easily gets flipped.\u201d The sister role, she said, is one she feels comfortable in, and one that she has fallen into before with other artists, both younger and older, including the New York City Ballet star Sara Mearns.<\/p>\n Melnick and Lee-Parritz\u2019s collaborative process represents the piece\u2019s most significant departure from Lispector\u2019s writing, the product of a singular consciousness. This dance is very much the product of two brains and two bodies working in tandem. \u201cI\u2019m experiencing her body next to me,\u201d Lee-Parritz said, \u201cand there is this kind of one-to-one mysterious transmission between her body and mine, her bones, her hair, the way she talks, everything. I can\u2019t even say what is my vocabulary and what is hers.\u201d<\/p>\n In her book, Lispector writes of a \u201cfragile conductive line,\u201d a \u201cbreath that heats the passing of syllables.\u201d It\u2019s not difficult to imagine a similar process taking place between Melnick and Lee-Parritz. Though each may be doing her own thing at times, they are always deeply connected.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do,\u201d Lee-Parritz said, \u201cwe\u2019re trying to touch that fragile conductive line and magnify and embody it.\u201d<\/p>\n