Dance Me to the End of Love

Dance Me to the End of Love was the 2019 edition of Poetry Is Life, the Rudolf Kempe Society’s annual programme of actors reading their favourite poetry, and Programme V of its 2019 Songs of Apollo Word and Music season at Stratford-upon-Avon. Devised by Cordula Kempe, it set classical and contemporary poems about dance, love and life – including new work by poets of the writers’ workshop at The Muses – beside piano music of many periods played by John Woolf, the RSC’s Director Emeritus. It took place on Sunday 10 November 2019 at 7.30 pm at the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, in aid of the Rudolf Kempe Society International Young Artists Platform.

Performers

Readers

• Clifford Rose
• Ruth Lass
• Nicholas Day
• Jennifer McEvoy
• Sam Dastor

Music

• John Woolf – piano. The RSC’s Director Emeritus, with whom Cordula Kempe had played chamber music for many years; the programme included his own music for The Tempest.

Programme

The booklet’s pages are printed out of sequence; the order below follows its Part I / Interval / Part II markings.

Part I

• Introduction; Anonymous – “Poetry is life itself”
• Yevgeny Yevtushenko – The Task of Poetry
• Noël Coward – Bad Times; a “weather forecast”
• Henri Chopin – Poetry Is Dance
• Johannes Brahms – Waltz in E major, from Op. 39
• Leonard Cohen – Dance Me to the End of Love
• Johannes Brahms – Waltz in A flat major, from Op. 39
• The history of dance – in time, in geography, in society
• Nature dancing: John Woolf – music for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act I; Shakespeare – “Come unto these yellow sands” (The Tempest, Act I, scene 2); W. B. Yeats – To a Child Dancing in the Wind; Thomas Arne – Where the Bee Sucks (The Tempest); Hazell Hills – Windfall Merry-Go-Round
• Humans dancing: William Wordsworth – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; Hazell Hills – Dorothy and William; William Byrd – A Jigg (1611)
• The young – would-be professionals: Hazell Hills – Statue of Ballet Dancer Dressed – Degas 1881; Nina Lewis – In the Wings; Nik Hills (professional dancer and poet) – Dreams
• Shirley Vinogradoff – Dancer; Nik Hills – Dance Partner
• Frédéric Chopin – Waltz in A minor, Op. 42
• Connie Ramsay Bott – Island Music
• Gerardo Rodríguez – La Cumparsita (tango)
• Jenna Plewes – Dreams; Linda Williams – Some People Love to Dance
• Claude Gervaise – Pavane d’Angleterre
• Leonard Cohen – His Thanks for the Dance; Her Thanks for the Dance; True Love
• Ludwig van Beethoven – Für Elise
• Claude Debussy – Clair de lune, from the Suite bergamasque
• Angela France – When Maggie Dances; Ann Alexander – In Class; Theodore Roethke – My Papa’s Waltz
• Dave Brubeck – It’s a Jiggy Waltz
• Henry Aldrich – Five Reasons

Interval

Part II

• Ray Noble – Love Is the Sweetest Thing
• Leonard Cohen – The Evidence of Life; notes and quotes on poetry by Leonard Cohen and others
• John Keats – O Fret Not after Knowledge
• Orlando Gibbons – Lord Salisbury’s Pavane
• Christopher Logue – In London Airport; “Airport bin”
• Sappho – We Shall Enjoy Them; women poets
• Anna Akhmatova – An Epigram by Me, Anna Akhmatova
• Tonelius Oliver – Poets Dance; Nik Hills – Blink
• François Couperin – Les Canaries
• Sundra Lawrence – A Poem Walks into a Workshop
• Edward Lear – The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, with the author’s drawings
• Nigel Hess – from Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Retrospect: Judy Ison – Sometimes; Gerald Stern – Bolero
• Georges Bizet – Habanera, from Carmen
• Elizabeth Jennings – Dance; William Prynne – Perils of the Dance
• Dance in opera and symphonic music: Igor Stravinsky – from The Rite of Spring
• Observations on history; Sundra Lawrence – Warriors; Sydney Carter – Lord of the Dance
• Johannes Brahms – Waltz in A flat
• Erich Fried – What Is Life?

About the programme

In her introduction Cordula Kempe noted that few poetry festivals let their actors choose their own favourite poems – which was why Poetry Is Life had been so popular for twelve years – and that the readers also spoke work by poets of the regular writers’ group at The Muses, “many of them highly regarded published poets”. Blending it all with music from John Woolf was, she wrote, “a tremendous challenge, as well as a great joy and honour”. Dame Judi Dench’s welcome called the theme of “Poetry, Life, Love and Dance – what a symphony!”

The booklet was illustrated with a Dancing Maenad after the Greek sculptor Skopas on the cover, Baldassare Peruzzi’s Apollo Dancing with the Nine Muses, Degas’s In Class and a statue of a ballet dancer, Constable’s The Sea, Edward Lear’s drawings and photographs of the writers’ workshop in the Studio at The Muses.

Credits

• Devised by Cordula Kempe; programme booklet compiled and designed by Cordula Kempe
• Publicity, printing and archive recording: Max Ross
• Dame Judi Dench, Patron; Richard Pearce, Chairman of the Society