Experiment for the ages

The year is 1967. Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park” is playing off-Broadway with Rip Torn. Top ticket prices go for a whopping $4.95. And there is a review in the Village Voice of “The Song of Songs,” composer Al Carmines’ take on the biblical book about love that featured six singers and three dancers, including a 27-year-old named Deborah Lee, and one dancer-choreographer, 36-year-old Aileen Passloff.

Theater critic Michael Smith described it as an oratorio with dances and sparse action that seemed to him to suggest a wedding feast. The combination of forms had its limits for Smith, but, he wrote, “somehow the elements merge into an event that is disarmingly direct in feeling. What gives this music its uncommon weight is its honesty of emotion. Whatever it is, it’s beautiful.”

The show had a limited run at Judson Memorial Church, where Carmines, who founded the Judson Poets’ Theatre and administered the dance and gallery branches of the alternative arts space, also served as associate pastor. Judson would become one of the birthing spots for the New York downtown arts scene, a home to conceptualism and minimalism in dance, a place where Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs cut their teeth. Carmines stayed in the ministry, but he also stayed in experimental theater: He would go on to receive five Obie Awards and four New York Drama Desk Awards. But “Songs” was never seen again.

Flash-forward to L.A. and 2003: Deborah Lee, now Deborah Lawlor, co-artistic director of the Fountain Theatre, rehearses a group of performers, many of whom were born after 1967. The stage, drenched in brilliant red, a giant scarlet rose painted on the floor, is like a lush Georgia O’Keeffe painting brought to life.

It’s Carmines’ “Song of Songs,” finally getting a second run, and Lawlor nods approval as Christy Bolingbroke, clad in a floral-appliqued shawl, elegantly pirouettes across the stage. Passloff sits in the small house taking notes and watching intently.

She is now creating movement on a new generation of dancers who will bring this all but forgotten work into the 21st century.

Lawlor, 63, and Passloff, 71, kept up their acquaintance from the Judson days, and although both pursued careers in the arts and talked by phone periodically, their lives rarely intersected. But late in 2001, their chatting turned to “Song of Songs” and the notion of resurrecting the work.

“I had so many memories of it,” recalls Lawlor, whose life after Judson took her to India, Tasmania, France and finally, in 1986, back to Los Angeles (she was born and raised in Riverside). “I used to sing those songs to myself, walking through the canyons of south India. That music was never written down, but it stayed with me all those years, as it did with Aileen.”

Reel-to-reel; now real

Passloff, an animated woman seemingly born with the dance gene, once played Topsy on Broadway in “The King and I” with Yul Brynner, had her own New York-based company for a decade and headed the dance department at Bard College for 27 years. She now holds an endowed chair as a professor at Bard, but she’s on a six-month sabbatical.

It was Passloff who managed to dig up an old reel-to-reel rehearsal tape of “Songs,” and she has been working with Lawlor on the revamped production since coming to L.A. in March to do the project.

“I thought the tape would be dust-ridden and useless, but we were able to digitize it and put it on CD,” Passloff says. “Deborah had it transcribed onto sheet music -- somebody did that by ear. It’s gorgeous music to me,” she adds, “full of heart and a kind of innocence and simplicity. It feels divine to come into that work again.”

Lawlor, who is directing the production, refers to their work as a kind of archeology, and to the current rendition as a dance opera, because it has more dancing than the original: They’ve added a dancer as well as Passloff’s new choreography. “But it’s in the same spirit,” explains the soft-spoken Lawlor, a model of seriousness in wireless glasses and neatly trimmed hair.

“It’s really a collection of love songs that found its way into the Bible by some fluke,” she continues, “because it doesn’t mention the word God. Ever. Some scholars think it’s [from] the Hellenistic period -- 300 BC, but the language is all 17th century, from the King James version of the Old Testament.”

And what rich language it is. “The chief metaphor,” the director says, “is woman’s body as a garden. It paints an Eden-like picture, where sex is not forbidden. It’s celebrated.”

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine,” is one of the famous lines used in this 50-minute production. Lyrics also speak of aromatic spices and herbs -- myrrh, cinnamon, saffron. Each song, such as “I Am the Rose of Sharon,” is meant to be a tiny jewel, a little like a Schubert lied. With dance added, the songs expand, their emotions made tangible.

David O, a pianist and composer and the show’s musical director, plays the newly minted score from an upright piano that is adorned with a large rose. Born three years after “Songs” made its debut, O, who also sings in the show (other vocalists include Debra Lane, Alan Porter Rackley, A.J. Teshin, Diana Tash and Gabrielle Widman), generally writes rock music. Still, he relates to Carmines’ work.

“It was fun to rediscover Al’s score,” he says. “I was surprised by how lush it is, but music of that era, the ‘60s, has always spoken to me, because there’s an inherent idealism, which is lacking today.”

Carmines, 66, who lives in New York, is pastor of Rauschenbush Memorial United Church of Christ. He recently received a Writers Guild award for his body of plays, 10 of which have been produced off-Broadway, including a musical setting of Gertrude Stein’s plays. He hopes to attend the opening of “Songs,” which he says grew out of a paper he wrote when he was an undergraduate at Swarthmore College.

“It occurred to me that something could be done using ‘Song of Songs’ as a vehicle to express my view of love, which is spiritual, physical, mental and emotional,” Carmines says. “I’m thrilled that Debby and Aileen are doing it now. They have an instinctual understanding of what I was trying to do, which is to spiritualize the relationship between God and the world, the infinite and the finite.”

Lawlor founded Fountain Theatre with Stephen Sachs in 1990, and under their direction, its plays have garnered more than 100 awards for theater excellence, including Ovation, LA Weekly and PEN West Literary honors in its 13-year existence. Lawlor is also responsible for the theater’s sidelight: dance programs. She produces an annual showcase for local choreographers, called Festival of Solos and Duets, and has produced more than 300 flamenco concerts, including the current “Forever Flamenco” series on Sunday nights. “Songs” seems to draw Lawlor’s passions together, combining the emotion of flamenco with theater. The choreography, however, is ballet-based. To that end, Lawlor and Passloff auditioned their dancers by attending dance schools in the area. Besides Bolingbroke, Albertossy Espinoza, Shari Washington Rhone and Steve Doss made the cut. In their 20s and early 30s, all but Doss have danced with local companies before (he’s trained as an actor), but this gig gives them an opportunity to perform for more than the few minutes allotted for mixed-bill programs. The fifth dancer, Julie Webster, a student of Passloff’s, came from Bard College to dance in the work; it’s her first paid performance.

Despite her Judson history, here Passloff combined unashamedly romantic choreography with “Song of Songs.” “My sources here are Diaghilev and Isadora Duncan,” she says, “but my reputation is as avant-garde choreographer. Getting to work at Judson Church with Lucinda Childs, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenburg -- he did costumes and sets for me -- that was an extraordinary time. But coming back to ‘Song of Songs,’ working with this music and these dancers and this theater has been marvelous. People always look back to the golden times. I feel this is a golden time.”

Adds Lawlor: “Al did the show as a valentine. ‘Song of Songs’ has no plot and is basically a fantasy. You imagine yourself as king and queen of the universe.”

Then she adds a perfect ‘60s coda: “The show is about people coming together -- to celebrate love.”

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‘Song of Songs’

When: Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m.

Where: Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood

Ends: June 26

Price: $22

Contact: (323) 663-1525