Walking a Narrow Line for ‘Tribes’

Ever since multiculturalism came into vogue in the late 1980s, more and more artists have been making works about their ethnic heritages. Such a task can be either liberating or limiting--as choreographer John Malashock and composer Yale Strom recently discovered.

Asked by the three-year-old San Diego Jewish Festival to create a new dance, Malashock enlisted Strom, and the two artists found themselves walking a narrow line in trying to make a “Jewish” work. The result of their efforts will premiere at the third annual festival, which begins Tuesday at San Diego’s Lyceum Theatre.

“We talked very early on, when the commission started, and I said, ‘What’s the difference between two artists who are Jewish collaborating and two Jewish artists who are creating [Jewish art]?’ ” says Malashock, whose Malashock Dance & Company is based in San Diego. “Where’s the Jewish part here?

“I had to allow for the fact that the Jewish nature of it was going to put itself there, rather than my saying, ‘This is a work about blah-blah, which is Jewish,’ ” he continues. “I suggested an idea of creating different cultures--basically fantasy cultures--and seeing what comes out of it.

“I had to trust that the influence of the music and just the overall theme of blending cultures was certainly something known and common to the Jews,” says the former Twyla Tharp dancer, whose own work has often explored psychological issues.

He joined up with Strom, a Los Angeles-based musician and filmmaker who has long done overtly Jewish-themed work. “[Malashock] gave me a lot of freedom,” Strom says. “He told me how he saw his dancers as coming from people all over the world, but having distinct aspects and differences.”

“Tribes,” the first work ever to be commissioned by the festival, premieres Thursday and repeats on Sunday afternoon, danced by Malashock Dance & Company to the live accompaniment of Strom’s Klezmer band Zmiros. It will also be performed by Malashock’s company, along with other repertory works, in a separate engagement on Friday and Saturday, both this week and next, also at the Lyceum.

Now that the piece is complete, it’s easier for the artists to see that making a “Jewish” work was almost inevitable. “Any time you delve into something cultural, even if it’s making up [cultures] that don’t have anything to do with religion, there’s definitely a sense of looking inside [yourself],” Malashock says.

“And if Jewish is part of what’s inside, it’s going to find a place.”

That was certainly the case when Malashock, choreographed “The Near Reaches,” a modern dance work performed to the sound of 15th-century Sephardic songs, which premiered at UCLA in 1994.

Typically, however, Malashock’s work has not been Jewish-themed, although he has an interest in the culture, which is what led him to attend last year’s festival. “I brought a group to last year’s festival, so I ended up with a fair number of opinions about its strengths and weaknesses,” Malashock says.

So, when festival producer Todd Salovey asked Malashock to serve as an advisor to this year’s event, the choreographer readily agreed. And he had plenty of suggestions.

“When Todd asked [about ideas for this year], I said it’s always interesting to see something created brand new,” Malashock says. “For example, if [Malashock Dance & Company] was to do something with Yale. . . .”

Salovey liked the idea, and the collaboration, backed by funding from the L.A.-based Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, was launched. The only hitch was that Malashock and Strom hadn’t even met.

“We had both heard of each other and done well in our various mediums but had never put it together,” says Strom, whose films include “The Last Klezmer” (1994) and “Carpati: Fifty Miles, Fifty Years” (1996), and who has created scores for theatrical productions, but never for concert dance.

“It’s not the most organic way of throwing a collaboration together,” Malashock adds. “But I thought that with his musicianship and blending of different styles, it would work.”

To be sure, they had more than their respective Jewish backgrounds in common. They also shared an interest in Eastern Europe.

Strom has traveled to that part of the world more than 40 times. And Malashock, though he hasn’t been there, is of Eastern European extraction.

“It’s in keeping with a fascination I’ve been having for knowing something about Eastern European culture,” Malashock says. “There’s a kinship there, [in] what parts of the music resonate with me.”

With that as the basis, the two artists dove into what could perhaps best be described as a commuter collaboration.

First, Malashock discussed his idea of blending cultures from fictitious tribes with his company of six dancers. “The dancers and I created cultures,” he says. “We made them up in terms of their traits, gestures, mating rituals and what’s symbolically important.”

Then the choreographer brought the idea to the composer. “We talked on the phone a couple of times,” Malashock says. “I loosely gave the idea to Yale. I didn’t even detail [the cultures] to him very greatly, just the concept.”

Then the two men went to their separate corners, Malashock in San Diego, and Strom in L.A., and they didn’t meet in person to work until Strom had had a chance to develop some sketches for the music.

“We got together a month and a half or two months ago and he played some ideas for me of what direction he was going to take,” Malashock says. “We talked about [having] three movements [in the piece] and the length that they should be. Then I let him do his thing.”

Strom, who calls his finished composition “Romanian Suite,” began with his interest in indigenous forms. “The Jews of those regions and the natives [have] their own folk culture, so I wanted to show this in the piece,” he says. “I was using the idea of the kinds of music the Jews and gypsies would have heard in Transylvania.”

When Strom had an outline of the three movements, he sent a preliminary version to Malashock. “I gave him the violin playing the whole piece and me counting off rhythmic parts,” Strom says. “Jewish music can be and is rhythmical. It doesn’t have to just be this wailing crying sound.”

From those tapes, Malashock began to sketch out the dance. “That is what I had to begin choreographing to,” he says. “I took some of [Strom’s] previous recordings and worked with the feeling of those. I had to work with the rhythms that he was working with, rather than around the melodies.”

Even in sketch form, though, it was clear that the music was made for dance. “When I wrote, I was thinking about the dancers,” Strom says. “I wanted something that would get in their kishkas CHECKING and in the audiences’.”

As Malashock and Strom had discussed, the composer created a three-part suite. “The three [movements] are distinct on their own, but will flow into each other,” Strom says. “It begins slow, gets into identifiable rhythm with a strong melody line in the first movement, then eventually goes into soft modality in the second movement.

“The second movement [Malashock] saw as being slower, more free form,” Strom continues. “The second movement is based on a melismatic line. You hear the flute taking this melody and the violin answering.

“In the third movement I wanted to use a strong drumming sound and identifiable melody, so the audience could maybe hum to it. The rhythm comes from the Carpathian mountains.”

The choreography is similarly eclectic, and at times vaguely, if non-specifically, ethnic-tinged. Performed by seven dancers, including Malashock himself, the dancing is based in the modern idiom but adds in gestural choreographies particular to the fictitious cultures being represented.

The key step, of course, was to put the music together with the dance. “Finally, [in the second week of May] we had all the musicians in the studio and I got to hear what it was going to sound like,” Malashock says. “It was a challenge that way. With most choreographers, the music is a huge portion of the inspiration.”

And yet, despite the long-distance collaboration, the artists are pleased with what they’ve created. “It’s always great for the composer to see how his music is being interpreted by the choreographer,” Strom says. “It was a big surprise, but I was happy.”

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SAN DIEGO JEWISH ARTS FESTIVAL, Lyceum Theatre, Horton Plaza, San Diego. Dates: Tuesday to Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; next Sun., 1 and 7 p.m.; June 6, 7:30 p.m. Prices: $10-$15; festival passes, $45 and up. Phone: (619) 235-8025. MALASHOCK DANCE AND COMPANY, Friday, Saturday and June 7 and 8, 8 p.m. Price: $18. Phone: (619) 235-8025.