Shadowing the Scientists
Posted by Caroline Cooper on 9/24/200819 days to the Doctor Atomic premiere!
Listen to choreographer Dawson on his “free agents”
“So you like the falling towards the screen?”—“It was better when it ends with your arms outstretched.”—“Last time I was too far forward. I couldn’t get out of the box.”
A group of dancers stood in sweats and sneakers around a towering wooden box, the front of the box covered with white fabric. Soft light illuminated the screen. Doctor Atomic choreographer Andrew Dawson watched as a single dancer moved towards the box and slowly fell. The dancer’s shadow, enormous now, dripped down the screen.
“Yeah, you have to kind of sweep across it,” Dawson observed. The falling dancer stood up, brushed his knees and took a few steps back. The group turned again to the white screen. The dancer stepped inside, his arms drifting up, his body slowly melting to the floor. “Ok, let’s do it again with the music,” Dawson said. And with that, a series of dancers melted before the white screen in a slow, shadowy demise.
Dawson was working with the group in a rehearsal of <em>Doctor Atomic</em>, sketching out his ideas for gigantic melting shadows and the slow fall of human figures that would accompany scientist Robert Wilson, sung by tenor Thomas Glenn, as he explores his second thoughts about the atomic bomb.
“I’ve dreamed the same dream several nights running,” Glenn sings. “I’m almost at the top of the tower and then I misstep, and I’m falling a long, slow fall.” The lines only take a few moments in John Adams’s opera. But the images they evoke will consume the Met stage. Unseen dancers will fill the screens with their measured, incremental descent.
Robert Wilson was appointed as head of the Cyclotron Group (R-1) by Oppenheimer. Only in his late twenties, he was the youngest group leader in the experimental division. His reluctance in being part of the project was evident from the start. In his memoirs, Wilson recounts being selected by Oppenheimer to head R-1: “Look, Oppie. Just pick one of the other three group leaders,” he said. “They’re all much more senior than I am, and each would hate working for a young fella like me.” “Not as easy as you think,” Oppenheimer told Wilson. “I have already tried to pick, in turn, each one of them, but in each case, the other two threatened to quit. So you, Bob, are elected, faute de mieux.”
When news broke that Germany was farther behind on its own bomb research than expected, Wilson would express regret for not halting work on the weapons project. The scientist would later become a leader in petitioning for international control of atomic energy. Yet Wilson also saw the great benefit in the continuing examination of the theories and findings he had helped to uncover. In his defense of the government-supported Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Wilson testified to the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, stating:
“It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean, all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”
Robert Wilson died in 2000 at the age of 85. He is buried at the 19th-century Pioneer Cemetery on the Accelerator Lab site. He upheld a complex relationship to his work. Through the dancers, screens and shadow-play of Doctor Atomic, choreographer Andrew Dawson strives to communicate that ambiguity.
The dancers gathered again, standing in unison, and began their slow motion falls. “Should we keep moving together or just do our own thing?” one of them asked. “Keep it together at first,” Dawson instructed. “After that, you’re free agents.”“Yeah, you have to kind of sweep across it,” Dawson observed. The falling dancer stood up, brushed his knees and took a few steps back. The group turned again to the white screen. The dancer stepped inside, his arms drifting up, his body slowly melting to the floor. “Ok, let’s do it again with the music,” Dawson said. And with that, a series of dancers melted before the white screen in a slow, shadowy demise.
Dawson was working with the group in a rehearsal of <em>Doctor Atomic</em>, sketching out his ideas for gigantic melting shadows and the slow fall of human figures that would accompany scientist Robert Wilson, sung by tenor Thomas Glenn, as he explores his second thoughts about the atomic bomb.
“I’ve dreamed the same dream several nights running,” Glenn sings. “I’m almost at the top of the tower and then I misstep, and I’m falling a long, slow fall.” The lines only take a few moments in John Adams’s opera. But the images they evoke will consume the Met stage. Unseen dancers will fill the screens with their measured, incremental descent.
Robert Wilson was appointed as head of the Cyclotron Group (R-1) by Oppenheimer. Only in his late twenties, he was the youngest group leader in the experimental division. His reluctance in being part of the project was evident from the start. In his memoirs, Wilson recounts being selected by Oppenheimer to head R-1: “Look, Oppie. Just pick one of the other three group leaders,” he said. “They’re all much more senior than I am, and each would hate working for a young fella like me.” “Not as easy as you think,” Oppenheimer told Wilson. “I have already tried to pick, in turn, each one of them, but in each case, the other two threatened to quit. So you, Bob, are elected, faute de mieux.”
When news broke that Germany was farther behind on its own bomb research than expected, Wilson would express regret for not halting work on the weapons project. The scientist would later become a leader in petitioning for international control of atomic energy. Yet Wilson also saw the great benefit in the continuing examination of the theories and findings he had helped to uncover. In his defense of the government-supported Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Wilson testified to the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, stating:
“It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean, all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”
Robert Wilson died in 2000 at the age of 85. He is buried at the 19th-century Pioneer Cemetery on the Accelerator Lab site. He upheld a complex relationship to his work. Through the dancers, screens and shadow-play of Doctor Atomic, choreographer Andrew Dawson strives to communicate that ambiguity.
The dancers gathered again, standing in unison, and began their slow motion falls. “Should we keep moving together or just do our own thing?” one of them asked. “Keep it together at first,” Dawson instructed. “After that, you’re free agents.”