November Steps The Japanese culture interested me ever since I came across the music of Toru Takemitsu. His music, although it was written 9.423 kilometers away from where I was, it felt very close to my heart. It spoke to me in a language which I understood in a clarity I never heard before. The first time I have used his music (“Ring” and “Valeria”) was for one of my early choreographic efforts in 1972. The piece was called “Der Stumme Orfeus” in English “The Voiceless Orpheus”. The idea was good - the choreography not..! Later I was introduced to Takemitsu’s masterpice “November Steps”. It is written for a european style orchestra and two Japanese traditional instruments: Biwa and Shakuhachi. In our talks, Toru Takemitsu made me understand that all his attempts to merge the European and the Japanese styles of music was simply impossible - no matter how hard he tried... It was premiered in New York in 1967, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. The instrumentalists were: Kinshi Tsuruta - Biwa and Katsuya Yokoyama - Shakuhachi. It resulted in a composition which started with an orchestral section, followed by a “cadenza” of the two instrumentalists, which gave them much space for improvisation, followed by the final orchestral section. 10 years after its very successful premiere I gave Takemitsu’s music a physical shape. My way of approaching the music was mostly intuitive. The shear conviction and beauty of the composition, and the extremely passionate improvisation of the two soloists, influenced every building stone of my choreography... It resulted in perhaps my most abstract choreography to date. But although it might be perceived as such, it was created with much passion which ultimately gave the “abstraction” a human face. I am unable now to retrace all the emotions which went through our hearts and brains while we have created “November Steps”, but surely this experience left many emotional tattoos on all of us...
When we showed “November Steps” at the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time, the original soloists of the world premiere, Mme. Tsuruta and Mr. Yokoyama accompanied us. This was of course a great privilege for us, but also a substantial worry. The main problem lied in the fact, that I didn’t take into account that these incredible artists were given the liberty of improvisation and that the improvisations on the recording which I have used for my choreography was at least 12 years old... Needless to say: the first rehearsal with the dancers and these wonderful musicians, was a disaster. After this experience, Mme. Tsuruta and Mr. Yokoyama,(who in the meantime were promoted to “National Treasures” in Japan), went to their hotel rooms and practiced their improvisations so that they would sound the way they sounded at the premiere 12 years ago. We have accepted their effort with thanks and gratitude. The premiere was very successful. This remarkable presentation of “November Steps” at the Metropolitan Opera House had only one flaw! I have asked the two Japanese musicians to take bow with all the dancers at the end of the performance. They were dressed in beautiful black kimonos and wore the traditional japanese footwear, which we might call “thongs”. The only problem is that these “thongs” were made for walking forwards only and not for walking backwards. But whenever we take bows on stage we walk forward as well as backward. And it was precisely this walk backwards which caused a very unfortunate embarrassment to Mme. Tsuruta, but also great amusement to a filled auditorium of the MET. As Mme. Tsuruta walked backwards from the “footlights” of the stage, she lost control of her footwear, and to her horror she was pulled back by the row of dancers, who held her hands, only wearing her socks, while her “thongs” stayed lying on the white stage totally footless and abandoned... The audience roared with laughter, and we were all relieved that such very important and strenuous undertaking finished with such a wonderful joke... Jiří Kylián - The Hague, December 4th, 2012