Tom's Life Bits

Jun 14, 2007 : 3:16 pm ET

As the lights come up on the performance of “Garden of Earthly Delights,” the dancers slowly move onto the stage, walking on all fours, and, in the shadowy atmosphere, they look exactly like animals. It is choreographer Martha Clarke's first indication to the audience that her interpretation of the medieval triptych by Hieronymus Bosch (1450?-1516) will be intuitive and inspired.

Clarke's work based on Bosch's painting opened this year's American Dance Festival at Duke University.

The scene is about Eden, visualized by Bosch, as a fantastical place where animals live in harmony with nature. The union of Adam and Eve has been blessed by God, who takes on the appearance of Jesus. As Clarke's animals stand tall, Adam and Eve separate themselves from the group and are immediately fascinated by two entwined dancers moving center stage. Suddenly we understand that the new duo represent the snake and the fruit-laden tree. When the snake hands Eve the apple, the deed is done, and the love-making, which begins as something beautiful, ends in shame and the two slink off to the wings.

In the painting's center panel hundreds of figures frisk about nude, swimming, making love and riding exotic animals in a circular parade. The pools of water that fill the center of the canvas would have been understood by the medieval viewer as an element of love-making. At the Reynolds Theatre, the floor shines so brightly it suggests a pool as smooth as glass. Clarke's dancers wear sheer unitards and their movements define carefree love-making, yet there is an undercurrent in the painting, which is interpreted similarly in the dance, that this is a false paradise and will lead to ruin and damnation.

It is, however, the look of hell, in the right panel, where Bosch shows his genius and the final moments of the dance where Clarke shows hers. The painted Hades is a black place where buildings explode and burn. A Tree-Man, whose body has rotted away, supports a round disc on his head where devils and their victims move around a swollen bagpipe. Ordinary musical instruments have magnified into instruments of torture and perpetual pain and so we see a figure tied to the neck of a lute, another hung on the strings of a harp and another stuffed down the bowl of a giant horn. Off to one side a bird-headed monster gobbles up damned souls, which include men, women and members of the clergy, and excretes them into a clear chamber pot. The scene is one of the most horrific in all of art history; it certainly gave pause to the medieval mind that saw it.

Clarke's interpretation puts Richard Peaslee's musicians on stage, lit from behind as if they are about to be consumed by fire. Some of the dancers are dressed as Benedictine monks and one wears a nun's mantle. Chaos and cruelty take over, defecation comes in the shape of potatoes rather than damned souls. The audience, unsure of the meaning, laughs in embarrassment at the repulsive act. The cellist enters the world of the dancers and as one undulates in front of him, he stabs her with the end pin of the instrument. The audience gasps and the dancer crawls away. In the finale, flying devils take over hell, swooping down and soaring as they move from the boundaries of the stage into the audience, marking the extraordinary scene with a spectacular ending.

“Garden” was originally produced by Clarke in February 1984, and has now been, as she said, “re-envisioned.” When we talked on the phone she said that she has retained the DNA of the original while using a new cast, designers and musicians. The aerial choreography in the first version was very new at the time; this production expands the use of fliers and Peaslee, who composed for the first version, is back to rework his music for this current adaptation.

Although Bosch framed his piece in a format usually found in religious altarpieces, this one, because of its literal depictions of sex and its criticism of the church, never made it inside any religious institution.

“The Garden,” 1510-1515, was a big favorite of college students as dorm decoration in the 1970s. In the haze of that time, this vision fit their fantasies. In its own day, it was highly prized, and the artist, who lived in southern Holland, completed many commissions, especially from the Burgundian nobility.

When I asked Clarke how she chose the “Garden,” she said, “Lynn Alston called me on a February afternoon in 1984 and said she was working on an NEA grant proposal and did I have an idea for it? I told her I would call her back in 10 minutes. I started rummaging through my art history books and there was a reproduction of the Bosch painting and I knew this was it.”

She claimed she did not know what she was doing with the first piece, but now, with 23 years of experience, she is certain that this version is good. I asked if she thought the audience would understand the dance if they did not know the painting and she replied, “It doesn't matter. The imagery will linger, the music is beautiful and the audience will have a magical experience.”

At the “talk back” after the Friday evening performance, Charles Reinhart, the director of ADF, and Clarke both said they are still working on other venues.

Clarke's interpretation of this very complicated painting is sheer magic. It is one of the great moments of dance and deserves a long life on many stages.