Conversation

Bill and Livia Vanaver are the founders, artistic directors and primary choreographers of The Vanaver Caravan. Through this entity they have been significant contributors to the cultural life of the Hudson Valley—and beyond—for over twenty-five years. In addition, Bill and Livia do workshops for elementary through high schools that are directly related to social studies and language arts curriculum. Their concerts include music, song and dance from diverse ethnic origins.
The Caravan will perform “Pastures of Plenty: Woody Guthrie in Dance and Music” with guest Pete Seeger on Saturday, November 4 at 7p.m. at the Bardavon, in Poughkeepsie. The performance will be followed by a 25th anniversary reception and swing dance ball. For information and tickets, call 473-2072.
—Jason Stern

Chronogram: What is your mission?
Bill Vanaver: It is based on our artistic vision and how we bring it to the world. Our artistic vision relates to the expressions of peoples all over the world and our respect and love for the variety of all the traditions.
Livia Vanaver: Especially through dance and music, which is our medium. And to take these multicultural elements and have them as springboards for our own creativity; remaining true to the traditions and yet being true to ourselves in terms of creativity. and then to take this material and to help to enliven our audiences, the people that we teach, and to create a community.
BV: And we make sure that when we perform ethnic material, we are able to present it back to the people that it comes from. Before we change it or arrange it or use it as a creative springboard to do something entirely different, we have already understood and become fluent with the subtleties of the cultural forms.
C: So you always get approval from authorities on the forms?
BV: Well we don’t always have the opportunity. But sometimes we do and we don’t know it. For instance, we were singing this song from Georgia—Black Sea Georgia, Caucasus Georgia—at a children’s show, and a couple walked up to us at the end with tears in their eyes, saying “I can’t believe somebody here cares and can sing in Georgian.” I wasn’t even sure my accent was correct—but she said it was perfect—“we couldn’t tell you weren’t from Georgia.” It’s just funny because sometimes we sing something and then people start babbling away in their own language, in the language of the piece, and we’re not fluent in the language, necessarily. And the language is only part of the style, of course, there are many other aspects to style.
LV: But from something like this, they might say that, oh, they have a friend who sings Georgian songs, and then we would find out about them, go visit them ,collect more songs, check our pronunciation, and go into more depth in whatever culture they represent. It doesn’t only happen with Georgia—it happens with everything we’ve ever touched.
C: So you are repositories for much cultural material. How long have you been doing this kind of work?
LV: We’ve been together for almost thirty years. But the company actually incorporated in 1974. So this is the end of our twenty-fifth anniversary year—launching into the next twenty-five years! And actually this concert [at the Bardavon, November 4] is interesting because it’s the Hudson Valley premiere of our Woody Guthrie show, which is called Pastures of Plenty—A Tribute to Woody Guthrie Through Dance and Music.
C: You recently released a CD of this material that you’ll be performing.
LV: Yes. And Pete [Seeger] is on the program, and we’re taking this opportunity to honor several people from different aspects of the community that we work in. Nora Guthrie, who is the founder and director of the Woody Guthrie Archives, is one.
C: What’s the relation?
LV: Nora is Woody’s daughter. But she’s been one of my best friends since college. We went to NYU together. She was a dancer and choreographer. So she’s been working on this project, Pastures of Plenty, with us for about two years.
BV: The irony is that Nora’s mom, Woody’s wife, was a dancer with Martha Graham, and Woody played for her classes, and actually performed with modern dancers years ago, during part of his career.
C: Did you study with Martha Graham?
LV: No, but I’m trained as a modern dancer. So Nora’s been working on this with us and she’s been vital in getting this piece out into the world. We’ve taken it to Germany, to Scotland, to Canada with her help.
C: So is this part of the work of taking the world’s traditional songs and dances and making them generally accessible? Woody Guthrie is pretty close to home.
BV: There are so many different styles in this particular show. The musical styles—even though Woody of course had a specific style—are quite diverse. We do some things very close to Woody’s own old-timey singing and then we also have other ways of treating his music, anything from swing to…
LV: Mexican mariachi.
C: Is Woody turning over in his grave?
LV: He is loving it! In addition to the mariachi there’s Hungarian gypsy, and in the concert we do this boogie-woogie piece, for a swing dance that we have.
BV: One piece is a mixture of certain blues styles that are not thought of at first as blues. All that I did in the music was to take the song itself and extend it where it wanted to go. It’s like a woodcarver chasing the wood to find an image. I just followed the song. I didn’t superimpose some extra thing that was from left field.
C: Is that the approach that you usually use?
BV: Quite often. I’m not a synthesist in the sense of creating calculated juxtapositions, that postmodern thing. I like to follow what’s being said to me by the material. Of course I have my own associations with it, I don’t claim to be objective.
C: But you have to be kind of clean in that sense, in order to see the possibilities in a thing and nourish them into being rather than impose your own idea of what it should be.
LV: Yes, to start out with. But we’re so cluttered that it ends up sometimes getting, you know… But I just want to say one thing. Harold Leventhal was Woody’s manager for many years. He heard us when we did this concert in New York City in some big space, and at intermission, after he heard “Deportees” [in the mariachi style], which is about the Mexican immigrants, he came backstage with tears in his eyes and said, “That’s exactly the way that it should be done!”
BV: One thing is funny about this idea of “clean”: it’s not only an intellectual thing. When I’m on a roll, I just create what I hear. It’s as though I hear it, somebody else is doing the creating and I’m just a vehicle. I think a lot of artists feel that way. But, I think Woody is underrated as a musician and interpreter. Even though he didn’t have a lot of chops and skills, his understatement and his understanding go far beyond what people credit him with.
C: And what do you account that to? What was his connection?
BV: His music is very rough-hewn. It’s like Bob Dylan. He took a long time to be acknowledged as a composer—as a musician that makes real choices, who phrases in subtle and interesting ways. It’s not something you hear right away, because we are trained to look for the acrobatics of the performance rather than the understatement, the relationship, more the way you would understand acting.
LV: Also he’s so authentic. He’s so authentic and he had this true love of every kind of person and every possibility. He wrote so many songs. He was prolific. We just did a concert in New York City which was part of a whole Smithsonian tour of Woody’s artwork. His artwork was on display at The Museum of the City of New York, and it was phenomenal.
BV: And for the first time, we’re going to have a set. It’s inspired by his artwork.
C: How many musicians are involved in the Pastures piece?
BV: I’ve stopped counting.
LV: Well, in our main band for the show is John Herald, Amy Fraydon, Mark Murphy on bass, and Joyce Anderson on fiddle. But then coming for this show, because it’s a special event, Kevin Maul on slide guitar, Frank Matthias, from WKZE, plays harmonica, and John Kirk, who plays guitar and fiddle…
BV: …plays everything…
LV: …he’s been with us for years.
BV: And Peter Eckland, who’s probably the best authority on early jazz and pre-jazz trumpet styles and that’s what he’ll be doing. And he’s also playing after the show at the benefit swing dance, and that’s with Peter Davis and Moody Hop Heaven and Peter Eckland.
LV: Do you want me to tell you about the other people we’re honoring?
C: Yes, if you can do it in a way that’s interesting and tells us your story at the same time.
LV: Okay. Well, let’s see. Julien Studley, who’s a local figure. He’s been involved with us since 1972. We’re honoring him for his sponsorship, support, and his commitment to the company on the Board of Directors, and his commitment to creating community, which is a big thing in what we do. Let’s see, Beacon City School District, and Dr. Lloyd Jaeger, for supporting our Arts-In-Education program, which is a very big part of the company.
C: You’ve been doing that for decades.
LV: We’ve been doing that a long time. But this is the longest-standing residency. We’re in our 12th year in Beacon. It started with a grant from The New York Foundation For The Arts—a seed grant, but the district has picked it up and it’s now part of the third grade curriculum. We work with all the third graders in the whole city every year.
BV: So everybody in Beacon, every single person in Beacon between the age of eight and—
LV: Twenty.
C: Wow. So, do you go alone, or do you take members of your company?
LV: Both. I bring the company in, and at the end, all the children perform for each other. We create festivals in the districts. We do this in Rondout as well. We create festivals so that, at the end, when we bring in the company, our musicians play live for their dances, and our dancers dance interspersed with their dancers, so they get to see a concert, be in a concert, and share this incredible material together. Each class focuses in on a different region, a different culture.
C: Do they love it?
LV: They love it, they love it. They live for it. They love to go to school because of it. And they’re deepening their understanding of what they’re reading in the textbooks. It is really thrilling.
BV: I think it affects the school as well as the children.
LV: Everybody’s involved because everybody sees it. Even if they’re not in it, they all experience it and they look forward to being in third grade to do it.
BV: Oh, I should have said, every child and their parents, you know, because it’s virtually everybody in Beacon, I think.
LV: Because they come to the show.
BV: They come to the show with all their family and friends.
LV: So we’re honoring Beacon City School District and Dr. Lloyd Jaeger for their commitment to arts in education. They’re also the prototype for all the residencies that we do in New York State and Pennsylvania.
C: How many are you doing?
LV: We do about 15 a year. And different people in the company go out. Bill’s in Queens, I’m up in the Albany-Schenectady area and this area and Pennsylvania. And we’re also honoring Pete and Toshi Seeger for their commitment to creating community and also for being so incredibly supportive of us throughout the years. Pete’s been on our concerts, as a guest artist. Years ago we did a program with him—I don’t know if you ever saw “Turn, Turn, Turn”—we did an entire concert of his music at the Bardavon.
BV: He was my first inspiration, musically.
LV: And Toshi’s my role model. She’s an amazing woman. Her gentleness and her organizational ability and her, just, tirelessness. Supporting Pete, supporting the community work that goes on, the Clearwater and that, and raising a family at the same time. She really is a big role model.
C: Livia, what you said about Toshi seems to describe your role in the Vanaver Caravan. I’ve always been impressed by all the things that you do—both of you—constantly creating new work, raising a family, working really diligently with an apparent sense of mission. But Livia in particular has an accentuated positiveness that precedes you wherever you go. You’re both inspiring!
BV: Thank you.
LV: Oh, thank you.
C: I was just remembering one of your performances which I was so touched by. It was a piece that had an Egyptian theme.
LV: “Tillers of the Soil”? It was a duet with me and Michael Scott? Wow. I love that piece.
C: All I remember is this quality of immaculateness. It was such clear expression.
LV: It was a very simple dance, very slow.
C: Yes, and then you told me afterwards that something had gone wrong.
LV: Yes, the music.
C: Maybe that contributed to the intensity of it.
LV: That was a Denis/Shawn revival, which we’re also involved with—another aspect of the company’s work is that we’re a repository for some of the works of Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis, who were the mother and father of modern dance in America. And through Jane Sherman, who is now 92 and danced with Denis/Shawn in the 1920s, she has recreated several of Shawn and St Denis’ pieces for the company. This was one of the pieces that was very well known in their Egyptian ballet, but it was also created as a duet that could stand on its own as well. This piece is amazing. We haven’t done it for a long time but I really want to do it again. I want to do it for Jane; she’s at a residence home in New Jersey.
C: It looks like hieroglyphs in motion.
LV: Well, it’s based on that.
C: What is the inspiration for your work?
LV: It is that we are carrying on traditions. That’s why when you say, “Is Woody turning over in his grave?” I say, no, he’s looking down, or looking up, or looking around at us with approval—he’s part of the show, I know it. And I feel totally wonderful, even supported, by his spirit.
C :So why is what you do important? What is the significance of it other than just as entertainment; other than from the pseudo-cultural perspective?
LV: For me, myself, it feels very enriching, enlivening inside, to be bringing this material forth. But the thing that comes to my mind, very first, is the way I see it affecting other people. Everybody wants to have a purpose in this world, and I love to feel like I really do fulfill a purpose: of making a connection with somebody else; of helping someone else to feel that connection in themselves. It really is about connecting, and this material is a wonderful way of connecting. If it was other material, I might use that, but I do feel that one of my purposes in the world is to help people have a sense of themselves. And this is just a phenomenal way to do it.
BV: At first glance you might say that it’s a celebration of diversity. And yet on a deeper level it’s about unity. It’s really about how these different traditions and—not only traditions, but—I don’t know what you’d call it—a creation… It’s a carrying of an impression. Relaying. It’s universal and so it really is about touching that sense of you that transcends and embraces the self.
C: Thank you. n