Hallelujah

Nevertheless, the collaboration with Lerman has been challenging. In addition to the hundreds of community workshops, the collaborators have traveled back and forth between Maryland and L.A. to spend intensive sessions deliberating over a central, emblematic story about Miyamoto‘s grandmothers, Misao, a Japanese picture bride, and Lucy, a Mormon Englishwoman. Two weeks ago, the company flew in for the final push to cobble the piece together from its various elements: new obon dances created out of story gestures; sections for the company that combine movement derived from such diverse sources as the Virginia reel and taiko drumming; rabbis and Buddhist reverends alternating chanting, or reflecting on sacrifice, duty, forgiveness (“setting up the questions for the evening,” according to Lerman). Community rehearsals were scheduled every night; those able to attend at least five will perform in the concert this weekend.

At one rehearsal I attended, Cotsen Auditorium was in a state of happy chaos. A group to one side learned Miyamoto’s obon dance, while another cluster worked on a rolling section representing the crossing of rivers. Rafi Feinstein, who is 12, joined the chorus proffering suggestions to Lerman, and young UCLA dancers reached out to help guide an elderly woman as new directions were called out. Ideas as well as movement phrases were repeatedly broken down and recombined in a process that Lerman likens to the Human Genome Project (“It always adds up when you put it back together”). A central movement motif of being off balance, Miyamoto pointed out, was the result of a tour of the Senshin altar, where a statue of Buddha leaning forward caught the group‘s attention. “See,” Reverend Kodani told them, “the Buddha is leaning into truth.”

What, I finally asked Lerman, is the piece in praise of? “At its most superficial and deep level, it’s about people‘s willingness to meet one another. We’re still figuring out what of your history and identity you have to let go of and what you need to take with you to do this. It takes a lot of will to work at that,” she added in a tired voice. “So maybe it‘s in praise of will.”