Arlen Hlusko & Fall for Dance North: [in]verse
Bright Shiny Things

Canadian cellist Arlen Hlusko clearly has a knack for unusual collaborations. She was composer Scott Ordway's cellist-of-choice for his Nineteen Movements for Unaccompanied Cello release (Acis, 2021), and with [in]verse she's again created something special. The project originated out of a collaboration with the Toronto-based dance festival Fall for Dance North and evolved into a recording that alternates between music performed by her and poetry readings by Canadian and International dance-makers. While violinist Lun Li, pianist Vicky Chow, and fellow cellist Francis Carr make guest appearances, [in]verse primarily features Hlusko performing sans accompaniment. One of the album title's associated meanings has to do with the fact that the seed for the project was planted in spring 2020 when the global pandemic inverted the world as we'd come to know it.

In truth, it was Ilter Ibrahimof, the Artistic Director of Fall for Dance North Festival, who initiated the project when he contacted the cellist about curating and recording it. Wrestling with how to present a dance festival virtually during the pandemic, the festival planners hit on the idea of wedding music and poetry, specifically by asking dance-makers to select poetry or spoken word pieces (and that could be read from their homes) and have music act as a complement in each case. After meeting virtually with the dance-makers to determine the poetry content, Hlusko turned her attention to the music. As presented, the work juxtaposes texts by Wordsworth, Hesse, Lorca, and others with compositions by Ordway, J. S. Bach, Reena Esmail, Bright Sheng, and more, the result an ever-stimulating panorama of words and music.

Once the festival finished in October 2020, the idea of converting the project into an album emerged, which led in turn to early 2022 recording sessions. Musically, [in]verse is distinguished by long-admired classics but even more six world premieres, all composed specifically for Hlusko and developed in collaboration with her. The scenery changes quickly, of course, when the tracks are largely one to two minutes at a time, but that only makes for a more stimulating listen.

Memorable moments are abundant. Hlusko delivers a lovely reading of the “Sarabande” from Bach's Cello Suite 5 BWV 1011 and a haunting, blues-drenched version of Charles Albert Tindley's “We Shall Overcome.” The third movement from Ordway's Nineteen Movements adds a pizzicato dimension to the presentation. With violinist Li joining the cellist, Reinhold Glière's rhapsodic “Berceuse” and the seventh variation from Bach's Goldberg Variations sing gloriously; as entrancing are Joseph Bodin de Boismortier's Sonata Va: Aria 2, which Carr and Hlusko perform as a cello duet, and Elgar's Salut D'Amour, which pairs her with pianist Chow. At album's end, Haiku by violinist-composer Michelle Ross brings the album to a stirring resolution.

“History,” an excerpt from Sean Dorsey Dance's Uncovered: The Diary Project, is particularly mesmerizing, its poignancy bolstered by the measured reading Dorsey gives it and the keening, majestic music Alex Kelly created to accompany it. The text illuminates how death engenders transitions from loss to grief (“the fossil that's left behind by loss”) to memory and eventually history, with the grasp of the “real” person growing muddier over time and Dorsey opining, “If history is the old rickety leaning house, then memory is the tool we use to build it.” Following immediately after, India Gailey's Mountainweeps perpetuates the elegiac tone of “History” when it feels as if it naturally extends out of it.

Moving too is Daniel Bernard Roumain's Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland?, the piece titled after the twenty-eight-year-old Black woman from the Chicago area who in 2015 was taken into custody after an arrest for a traffic violation and was found hanged in her cell three days later, the death ruled a suicide. At six minutes, the piece is three times longer than most of the others, but Hlusko uses every moment to articulate the anger, anguish, and bitterness the case engendered.

Elsewhere, powerful pieces by Matthias McIntire, Leyla McCalla, and Lenworth Ryan Wilmot alternate with texts by Patricia Beatty, Mthuthuzeli November, Joy Harjo, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, George Elliott Clarke, Daniel David Moses, and Quentin VerCetty. Whereas Shantala Shivalingappa gives Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud” a memorable run-through, an excerpt from Hesse's Siddhartha receives a multi-lingual reading from choreographers Anne Plamondon and Victor Quijada. Written during the Spanish Civil War, Lorca's “Romance Sonámbulo” is read in its original Spanish by Vanesa Garcia-Ribala Montoya.

Each listener will come away with certain pieces resonating long after, but one thing probably all will agree on is how incredibly the cellist performs throughout. She's capable of playing with great delicacy but also fearlessness; regardless of the character of the material, she executes it with authority and conviction. There's nothing remote about her playing either; open-hearted expression is present throughout. It's no wonder Ordway chose her as the cellist for his album-length project.

April 2024