Casting a Carefeul Eye On Loss

In 2002, after the death of her longtime partner Mieke van Hoek, Meredith Monk began making a multimedia piece about “the fleeting nature of life.” At first glance, the theme of “Impermanence,” now at BAM’s Harvey Theater, seems almost redundant. After all, what occurs onstage — whether music, dance, theater, or film — is always impermanent.What Ms. Monk has done in “Impermanence” is turn her meticulous eye on the ephemeral, arranging it in small, distinct blocks. The results make for a mesmerizing evening — in no small part because the exercise is so clearly fascinating to its own multi-talented performers, who approach its every step or note with absolute concentration.Though it deals with loss, “Impermanence” is not an especially emotional theatrical experience. A vaguely melancholic mood prevails, driven by shadowy lighting and a musical score composed mostly in shades of blue. But formal structures, not raw emotions, are the focus here.That tone is set immediately, as a series of ordinary faces are projected on a back wall. While the film runs, each face changes slightly — the mouth doesn’t move, but occasionally, the eyes blink. These face-to-face, silent encounters with strangers go on long enough to become a bit unnerving. Then the music starts.Ms. Monk’s score for “Impermanence” is its glory — an exactingly crafted procession of songs, instrumental compositions, and incidental music. All the trademark Monk texture is there: the clucking bird sounds, the chanting, the quivering ululations, the plucked piano strings. Someone even plays a bicycle wheel. But as always, the human voice has pride of place.And in Ms. Monk’s capable hands, the human voice is like an artist’s box of pastels. There is an opening solo, “Last Look” (performed by Ms. Monk while seated at the piano) that has a high-pitched, almost Joni Mitchell sound; it mixes nonsensical syllables with startling absolutes: last rite, last word, last goodbye. There is a joyous mixed-meter jig called “Particular Dance.”There are pristine examples of hocket technique, in which the notes of a single melody are divided among multiple, quick-firing singers. There is a chorale with exquisite harmonies that closes Act I, powerfully sung by the full company. And there is the whimsical number in which the piano is gradually colonized by 16 hands.All of this music is made onstage. Some of it issues forth from a cluster of instruments amassed in one corner of the stage. The rest comes from microphones clipped to the heads of the singers, as they move through choreographed sequences. There’s no concealment of mechanics here — entrances and exits are deliberately blunt. This lack of stage artifice gives “Impermanence” a certain downtown, communal feeling, despite its multimedia polish and the imposing atmosphere of the Harvey Theater.The choreography — a collection of movements and dance passages of the sort that require little formal dance training — adds to the outsider feeling. These are movement sequences for a motley crowd of ordinary types — an older woman in a baggy blouse and slacks, a guy in a muscle shirt, a bald man in a denim vest, a tall woman in an evening dress, a shorter woman in a 1960s sleeveless shift dress. But the particular roughness of these ordinary movements is eyecatching; Ms. Monk’s awkward shapes tell fragments of stories.In “Particular Dance,” a kind of fractured folk dance, each of the five takes an exuberant turn in the center of the circle, galloping through a very personal, sweetly awkward dance. In “Liminal,” a man and a woman sit in spot-lit chairs; when they recline and lift their feet off the floor, they flop in the air like beginning swimmers. Later, they take turns stepping into a square of light and standing stock-still, while a wide range of expressions cycles rapidly across each face.Above all this stage activity, short films play intermittently. These flickering images of faces and eyes — and a later sequence of historical snapshots — serve to expand the work’s circle from Ms. Monk’s ensemble to a wider human community. Even the natural world is invoked at one point, in a series of eye-catching videos that appear to zoom out from the innermost molecular layer of an object, finally arriving at the outer shell of — surprise! — a tree or a head of hair.Well-constructed as it is, “Impermanence”can sometimes be too conceptual for its own good. A needless intermission disrupts the piece, and a costume change (same clothes, now monochromatic) feels gimmicky. Ms. Monk’s postmodern skepticism can sometimes get between the viewer and real feeling — as when the truly joyous “Particular Dance” dissolves into a faux-broad-comedy sequence of the old folks panting and wiping their brows.But these small lapses only reinforce one’s appreciation of Ms. Monk’s thoroughness. Every instant of this piece has been considered, every note polished. Ms. Monk has often spoken of her attraction to the ideal of the total work of art. “Impermanence” has a full complement of performance elements — a rich score performed by resonant voices, and a skillful blend of movements and images. Yet this total art doesn’t encompass the viewer; “Impermanence” deliberately holds itself at a distance. You can’t get inside of it any more than you can get a lost moment back.Until November 5, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100.

Casting a Carefeul Eye On Loss

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