Anthony Minghella’s voice emanates from the speakers at Los Angeles’ Mimoda Studio. Joe Davis and Tiare Keeno move to its cadences, stopping and starting, rolling through their movements as the words roll off Minghella’s tongue.
London-based choreographer Jonathan Lunn watches thoughtfully from the front of the dance studio. He’s made the trip to L.A. to create and set choreography for his four-part opus, The Minghella Project.
Twenty years in the making, the work, performed by BODYTRAFFIC, encapsulates his collaboration with Minghella, who died in 2008. The Minghella Project will premiere in April at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. In addition to being the first dance production commissioned by the venue, the work will be the longest running dance show to ever play at The Wallis, with performances every day for a full week.
“I miss him and wish he were here,” Lunn said of Minghella. “There’s a sadness but also a need and a desire to keep his work alive. And remember what a wonderful man he was.”
Many people know Minghella as the director of films Truly, Madly, Deeply and the Academy Award-winning, The English Patient. But Lunn knew him as a writer, an artist, and, above all, a friend.
Lunn and Minghella met as drama students at the University of Hull, in England. It was here they struck up a friendship that was to span decades, and would eventually grow into an artistic partnership. In the early 1980’s, when Lunn was a fledgling choreographer interested in the relationship between movement and language, he asked Minghella to write a text to accompany his choreography. This text was “Hang Up,” the first of the four dance works — all set to texts by Minghella — that comprise The Minghella Project.
In a rehearsal for The Minghella Project, Tina Finkelman Berkett and Guzman Rosado of BODYTRAFFIC sit at opposite sides of the dance studio, knees curled against their chests, searching each others’ eyes. Even as they inch closer — until Rosado is resting his body on top of Finkelman Berkett’s — there is a sense of distance between the two. He arches his back, peeling his arms and legs from her figure, expressing this distance. They are physically together, but it still seems they are miles apart. This is what “Hang Up” looks like today.
The piece is accompanied by dialogue that mimics the audio from a phone call — and uses the script written by Minghella — to explore human relationships and connection. The other three pieces in The Minghella Project—“Mosaic,” “Self Assembly,” and “We Swim” — each address these themes in their own way.
The concept of memory also connects The Minghella Project’s four sections. “I always felt I didn’t really want to just produce an evening of four separate works with a common theme, which was me and Anthony,” Lunn said. “I’m looking at it as a kind of memory piece. It could be interpreted as a look back at into a relationship that happened some time ago.”
But the creation of The Minghella Project has become as much about present connections as it is about those in the past. Lunn and Los Angeles-based dance company BODYTRAFFIC are collaborating on this project, a partnership that — according to both parties — felt like a perfect match.
Paul Crewes, artistic director at The Wallis, introduced Lunn to Finkelman Berkett and Lillian Barbeito, the co-artistic directors of the company. Having commissioned the work for the venue, Crewes had BODYTRAFFIC — which is also the Wallis’s 2019-2020 Company in Residence — in mind for The Minghella Project.
“BODYTRAFFIC is an energy and a force within dance that is doing great things,” Crewes said of the company, who The Wallis also presented in 2018. “I wanted to give them a chance to come back to both present their work and make some work with them.”
Since then, the collaboration has blossomed. And although, prior to their meeting, Finkelman Berkett and Barbeito were not familiar with Lunn’s work, they couldn’t be happier with the direction the work is taking.
“Connecting with Tina and with BODYTRAFFIC felt like a wonderful and kind of perfect discovery,” Lunn said. “I think this group of dancers are just the right people for me to be working with on this project.”
BODYTRAFFIC was founded in 2007 by Barbeito and Finkelman Berkett. Since then, the company has grown into one of national renown, performing a diverse repertory of original works by some of the biggest names in contemporary choreography. In addition to Finkelman Berkett — who dances with the company along with her leadership role — BODYTRAFFIC has six dancers. But for The Minghella Project, BODYTRAFFIC dancers aren’t just having the work set on them. They are creators, too.
In rehearsal, Lunn works with BODYTRAFFIC to develop and re-envision choreography. Three of the four works are being reimagined for the show — or in the case of “We Swim,” — choreographed for the very first time.
The text for “We Swim” was written for Lunn by Minghella in 2006, but has never been used by the choreographer until now. “In the last 10 years since [Minghella’s death], “We Swim” [lay] in a drawer. It’s never been published or anything. This is going to be the first time that it sees the light of day,” Lunn said. “What’s fascinating and weird for me is that I’m going through a process where I’m revisiting work from nearly 35 years ago and also working on brand new material.”
One piece in The Minghella Project, “Self Assembly” — the duet danced by Davis and Keeno — will remain in its original form. The text score that accompanies it mimics the language and structure of an instruction manual in order to investigate the ways humans form bonds with one another. “Self Assembly” is also the only piece of the four to use Minghella’s voice as accompaniment. But this and his writing aren’t the only ways he contributes to The Minghella Project.
“It’s really just felt like Anthony is a part of this creation,” Finkelman Berkett said. “He’s as important a part, if not the most important part, that’s really driving and influencing all the decisions that we’re making.”
Even when his voice is not echoing through the studio, Minghella’s presence is felt.
The Minghella Project will run from April 18 – April 24, 2020 at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are available at thewallis.org