Choreographing sacred songs while ignoring their content: Cultural misappropriation in zoe | juniper's CLEAR AND SWEET

(Note: One from the vaults: a revised version of a previously unpublished review, commissioned for a 2016 research project in dance criticism at Elon University, of zoe | juniper's controversial work, CLEAR & SWEET, presented by Carolina Performing Arts.)  

CLEAR & SWEET

★ 1/2 (out of five)

zoe | juniper
Carolina Performing Arts

Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill

October 5, 2016

Review by Byron Woods

What do we ultimately make of the faiths of our ancestors, our regions, our cultures? Since none of us selects our initial religious orientations – either the ones into which we’re born or the lack thereof – such questions frequently emerge during adolescence and young adulthood, when we interrogate earlier choices others have made on our behalf and their impact on our identities. Sometimes the answers are immediate and self-evident, and we easily reject or ratify those beliefs as our own. But when there’s deep ambivalence, the questions can linger unresolved for years, if not a lifetime.

It's still fundamentally unclear what choreographer Zoe Scofield makes of Sacred Harp singing, an art form embraced by the Primitive Baptist religious tradition in the 19th century, even though she has made, with scenic designer Juniper Shuey, CLEAR & SWEET, an evening-length, multimedia dance and music work largely based on the genre.

Though Sacred Harp, also known as shaped note singing, nearly died out with the waning of its adoptive Baptist sect toward the end of the 20th Century, the art form has experienced a resurgence of sorts in popular culture in recent years after being prominently featured in films including Cold Mountain and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Although she grew up among a family of Northern transplants in rural Georgia, Scofield has mentioned in interviews and a post-performance talkback in Chapel Hill that she recoiled from the religious small-mindedness she encountered in the Southern towns of her childhood. Yet she found herself inexplicably drawn to the music when she encountered it, several years back, at a cultural center in North Carolina.

That's wholly understandable: the beauty of Sacred Harp, sung a capella in a simple four-part harmony, largely stems from its austere economy of expression. When performed traditionally, by banks of treble, alto, tenor and bass singers facing one other across an empty center space, its songs are direct, impassioned and undeniably powerful, as seen in the documentary footage linked at left. 

But since these hymns frequently reflect the theological doubts of Primitive Baptism, a religion whose adherents reject any lasting certainty of their own spiritual salvation, their lyrics are also often quite severe. Their dire admonitions run throughout the libretto for Clear & Sweet; after the early song, “Mission,” warns that "Death eternal waits for you / Who slight the force of gospel truth," it continues:

Youth, like the Spring, will soon be gone By fleeting time, or conqu'ring death; Your morning sun may set at noon, And leave you ever in the dark.

Your sparkling eyes and blooming cheeks Must wither like the blasted rose; The coffin, earth and winding sheet Will soon your active limbs enclose.

(Further sturm und drang, after the jump.)