PBS Wisconsin Documentaries

A Place called Chalice Stream

A Place Called Chalice Stream Transcript

[gentle flute music]

[birds chirping]

– Barry Lynn: Sometimes, it’s orange. Sometimes, it’s yellow. Sometimes, it’s pale. But what an exquisite thing, and to see it reflected in the pond… The moon is magic. Its mystery; it has the ability to erase what is ugly. And to create a world that is enchanted.

[gentle flute music]

[birds chirping]

– Michael Doran: I don’t know what the magic is about this place. People have used that word, “magic,” “enchantment.” A person walked out here and said, “It’s almost as if the land had been touched by some loving hand.” And I know it’s not our own hands just toiling on the place that have done it. It seems to me the light has something to do with it, the way that the land itself is laid out and the way the light plays on it. This place feeds me a great deal. What I feel come over me, really, is a sense of inspiration and insight that I think I gain from the stillness and the quiet that exists here. Chalice Stream is, for me, the working out of a dream, I guess, in a way.

[gentle flute music]

Chalice Stream, to me, incorporates two symbols that are very important in my life. The chalice being, of course, a cup used in a Christian ceremony. But I don’t think of it as necessarily Christian alone. I think of it as a cup that is reverenced and respected. And that is my attitude toward art. I respect art, I cherish art. I also know the reality behind the chalice too, that the ceremony that was initiated there was a ceremony that preceded a terrible execution. And so I know, too, that there is a price that one pays when one becomes an artist. There is a discipline, there is a dedication, a commitment to the artist’s life. And so the chalice, to me, is both something to cherish and something to discipline myself with. Stream, of course, a refreshing source and so bountiful and plentiful here in northern Wisconsin. We hope, here, that Chalice Stream will both be uplifting to people as the cup is and also will be refreshing to them as the stream is, and ongoing.

– I like sitting here in this window and looking out there. When we came here, well, the first thing we had to do was to clear all this land. We had to pull up stumps. We cut, we cut brush, cut brush. It was all overgrown, overgrowth. We had to clear this land so we could get the studio in here. That was the beginning of Chalice Stream. Chalice Stream began in work. It began in labor. And that labor still continues, but it’s labor that is producing… It’s producing art form. It’s producing a place that has a significance with people. It’s producing the opportunity to show a way of life, to show an attitude toward life that one doesn’t find around very much these days. And I think perhaps that is one of the greatest things about Chalice Stream, is that we are showing that one can live that kind of an attitude. And still survive.

– Michael: Barry Lynn is both the reason I left here and the reason I came back. I was very lonely here, alone. I had memories, primarily, memories and visions. But missing someone to share them with and, especially, someone to bring in his or her own ideas. Someone, especially, who would be taken with this place. And Barry was taken with this place. He was also disappointed when he did come here to see all the grass and all the work to be done. But he could see, through my eyes at first and then later, through his own eyes, what this place was becoming. When I was a youngster up here, vacationing on this land that belonged to my grandparents, I… And coming here from Chicago, I could breathe again. And it was a release. It was a wonderful release. And I guess I think of this land in my life as being a place where my spirit felt very at home and felt very at ease. And felt very exhilarated. And yet, in my adult years, even when I was living up here and teaching in the winter, public schools and in Ladysmith schools, I kept trying to find some way of bringing the arts, which I had come to discover in my adult life, finding a way to bring the arts into play in this natural environment.

[gentle flute music]

I don’t create a dance for the music, but the music begins to make me feel a certain way. Probably, a mood is begun. And out of that mood, an idea begins to form. And then I begin to explore the mood in movement, along with the idea, the direction. Dance is a wonderful, wonderful incorporation of very fundamental, elemental dimensions and experiences in life. I have a deep admiration for the classical Japanese art of living. One of the main elements that I see in that art of living is simplicity, refinement. And “Fly to the Lost Beloved” was created to exemplify those elements. On the surface, it’s simply, almost as in a haiku poem, a very brief essence of what it is to experience separation from one someone has loved. And the effort to bridge that separation by releasing a bird that has been enjoyed by the two to join the spirit of the departed.

[gentle music]

– Well, dance is, in my opinion, the expression of the human spirit. That’s what modern dance originally set out to do. When modern dance began back in the ’20s, it set out to be something that spoke of the human spirit. Of course, now, it has become so fractured and gone on in so many different directions and is doing so many other different things. The human spirit, to a great extent, has become rather lost in the current of things that are being done now, that are being called modern dance.

[“Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis]

All of my work is, in one way or another, dealing with the ability of man to transcend, the ability of man to rise above the circumstances in which he finds himself. In my choreography, in my whole life viewpoint, I am not interested in man as he is. As he is, he’s a bore and he’s rather dull, and oftentimes, terribly stupid. Because he keeps making the same mistakes over and over and over. I am interested in man as he has the potential of being, as he has the possibilities of becoming. And this is the person I deal with in my choreography, the person who could be.

[uplifting music]

[dramatic music]

For me, the ultimate creative act always is the person. That’s the ultimate creative act. You use the art form to express the person that is behind the art form. The art form in itself should not do this. It should be the tool, the vehicle through which the human being expresses. Because in creativity, there’s nothing new you can say. There’s nothing you could say that hasn’t been said thousands of years ago. But we can give it a different coloration. And we present that to people, saying, “Here is one way that universal life experiences “can be looked at, one way they can be felt, one way they can happen.” And if you empathize into that, then your own perspective of life has been broadened out and widened.

[ethereal music]

– Chalice Streams been good for our community. This is relatively a dairy farming community. And it’s something so far removed from anything that most of us would have been in contact with that it just seems to some people to be sort of out of place. But I think it broadens our perspective. It gives us some ideas of what’s going on in other parts of the world, and gives us a little glimpse into something that is going on in places that we haven’t been.

– I think to go straight to my impressions of what Chalice Stream means to me is the kind of dedication that the men have to their art, to the way they attempt to reach people and to convey their understanding of the world is spiritual. It’s very uplifting.

[“Canon in D” by Pachelbel]

– Barry: I’ve been a teacher for 50 years. I get amused sometimes when novices who have been teaching four, five, six years begin to call to me all the formulas and methods they learned in methods classes at the university, you know. And I always feel I want to wipe their noses. Because after 50 years, you’ve tried every better technique there is in teaching and you’ve had an awful lot of time to learn a lot of things. A good teacher is a person who tries to unlock what is in you. When you approach a new student, it is though that person is wrapped in a cocoon and inside the cocoon is a butterfly. But you have to help the person crack the cocoon so that the butterfly chrysalis can come out.

[“Canon in D” by Pachelbel]

– Daniel’s father and I both encourage our children to do whatever they’re capable of doing. And with Barry’s guidance, I think Daniel is developing a talent in himself that perhaps wouldn’t have been recognized otherwise.

[no audible dialogue]

When Daniel first began dancing, I think that what he was expecting was probably a lot of physical activity. And what he is learning and doing is physical, but not in the same sense. He’s learning how his body moves, how to help his body move. I think this will be very good for him when he plays tennis, when he plays basketball. He’s also learned music, how music and movement can combine to create something pleasant, something enjoyable for himself and for other people.

– Daniel: I wanna keep going at dancing ’cause Barry said that it takes at least ten years to make a good dancer, and so I’m gonna keep working at that. And I’m not sure whether or not I’m gonna keep, y’know, dancing as a professional career, but it’s gonna come in helpful, y’know, in just anything.

[“Canon in D” by Pachelbel]

[birds chirping]

– Barry: And press out, two, three, four. Press in, two, three, four. And one and two. And three and four.

– Barry as a teacher is not just a dance teacher. He’s a teacher of a philosophy of life. I’ve known him for two years now. And I regard him more as a friend than as a teacher. Although I have great respect for the experience and the knowledge that he teaches us in the dance classes.

– Barry Lind teaches a technique that can be used in all forms of dance. He doesn’t teach a particular style. Although if I were to choose one style that I would say it’s most closely related to, it would be modern. But it’s not simply learning a technique here. It’s experiencing everything that’s out here. It’s experiencing nature; it’s becoming a part of nature. Something that we’re all a part of. So it’s relating dance to just basic stuff of life, you might say.

– Backs flat, or you’ll strain your kidneys. And step, and push out on it, and step. And push out on it, and step. Keep that back flat. I never demand from a student anything more than I know that student is capable of doing. And I have common sense enough to not demand beyond what I know the person has the talent or the ability to do. But if you have the talent and the ability and you’re sloughing off and not doing it and not realizing it, I can be a very nasty teacher at times. I don’t get the nickname of “The Sergeant” for nothing. I can crack a good whip. Consequently, I do have a big following in students because not many students are quite willing to go that route. They’re not quite willing to go that way.

– My friends tell me that since I started taking dance, I look like a dancer when they see me walk down the halls of school from one class to another. I look like a dancer. And sometimes, I wonder if that means I limp now, whereas before, I walked like a normal person. Because at least half of the time, I’m in some sort of pain from the things that we do here. But what that’s done is wake my body up. Before, I think it was asleep. And now, I know that it’s there, and every time it hurts, it means I’m doing something; I’m trying to do something hard and well.

– Barry: Good. Thank you, thank you very much.

[class applauding]

So we had the group…

– I feel very fortunate to have met someone like this in my life. I have always respected older persons. I was an only child; grew up pretty much around adults.

[clearing throat]

And I felt very comfortable with them and felt a rapport with them. But not all older people are wise. I feel Barry is. And life, for me, is too short to go through simply living with people on a day-to-day basis who are making the mistakes that perhaps I might avoid.

– Barry: When I hit 60, I felt that I’d been serving apprenticeship for 60 years. It takes that long. It takes that long to begin to acquire some wisdom. I always jokingly love to say to people, you know, that you spend the first 35 to 40 years of your life making all your mistakes. Then you spend the next 10 to 15 years trying to extricate yourself from the mistakes. Then you are ready to start learning something about life. You are ready to settle down and start living then.

– Barry has told me he’s learned a lot in his living. And I feel I’ve made some giant steps. I’ve taken some giant steps in my own maturing process by being around someone who can fill me in a little bit on some of those pitfalls.

– You know, some young people will reach a certain age and then they die so young because the inside has died. But if the inside is always reaching, if you are reaching always for that one vague word, beauty, the soul has to always be trying to find beauty, to try to find what is the meaning of beauty, that beauty is the sole reason for existence, really. I have often said that if you look into the heart of a flower, you will find the whole secret of life inside the heart of a flower. It’s there. Because the beauty is there, the naturalness is there. All of it is there, compact. And that whole search for beauty… Without beauty, the soul dies. Roses are the most difficult of all flowers to try to do anything with up here in Wisconsin. It’s almost impossible to get them through the winters because they freeze. I’ve tried every method everyone has suggested, and for five years, I’ve lost my roses every winter. These are all new roses that were put out this year. And if I can’t pull them through this winter, I think I’m going to give up on roses. But a flower garden without roses, it’s like a meal without dessert, you know? Good heavens.

[laughing]

– Michael: This place is teaching me, and Barry too, has taught me a lot about one’s limitations. And I think that’s good. And also, the need for respect for nature. That nature provides a lot of accidents that one should learn to enjoy.

– They are such beautiful things!

[laughing]

What more can you really say? They are such beautiful things. I love all the flowers; I love all of them. But the rose is considered more or less sort of the top of the garden, you know? It’s the crme de la crme of the flowers.

[laughing]

It’s such a beautiful thing. Look at that yellow. Isn’t that exquisite? And they’re so short, so short in their life. The bud opens in the morning, and then by the next day, it’s gonna full flower, and by the next day, it’s getting like this, and then three days later, it’s probably gone. And I think partly it’s that transience, the way that these things in life that are just so exquisitely beautiful only last a few moments, it seems. And all the ugliness is like the weeds, you know? You can’t get rid of it.

[laughing]

Or the grass you can’t get to stop growing out there, you know, that has to be cut every day practically. But the rose is such a beautiful formation, and the fragrance, and the delicacy of it, It’s like… Well, you know, it’s like a dance or a piece of music. It’s a thing that’s a time-space thing. A dance exists only at the moment you’re doing it. A piece of music exists really only the moment you’re hearing it. And the rose blooms such a short, little bit of time, and it’s gone.

[gentle classical music]

– Michael: Something that dance has taught me I feel that’s very important is that very few things last. Especially a dance performance. It’s performed and it’s gone. It’s simply a memory, unless it’s filmed, of course. But even there, film can’t capture what happens live.

– One weekend, a friend said, “Come with me to a Sunday afternoon performance “at Chalice Stream. I want you to meet Barry and Michael.” And it was a beautiful afternoon, and there were many other afternoons like that. Chalice Stream is a bastion of creativity. It is a place where people are encouraged to search for new meanings.

[group chatting]

[audience applauding]

– So good afternoon and welcome. Our apologies for any interruptions, inconveniences that you may have had. This is not a normal Sunday afternoon concert, as you, I think, can imagine here. We are very pleased and honored and privileged to have this opportunity to present our work and this place and what we’re trying to do here to a wider public by way of television, by way of public television. I’m Michael Doran, this is Barry Lynn, this is Daystar. We three will be performing for you this afternoon.

– I met Barry Lynn in Salt Lake City. And I had gone to Salt Lake to study at the University of Utah to study for the master’s degree in dance. And happened to see a concert by him early in that first semester. And was absolutely intrigued with the kind of thing he was doing. I played somewhat of a role in bringing him to Ladysmith. I was teaching dance at Mount Senario College in Ladysmith at the time, and had started the modern dance program. And it was at that time that Michael Doran first worked with Barry Lynn. And I guess, maybe, I was instrumental in bringing them together.

[laughing]

[eerie music]

[vocalizing]

– Michael: The “Kyrie” is a dance that deals with frightened people in frightening times, who instead of looking for answers, look for escapes.

[wolf howling]

The cry, “Kyrie,” is, in a sense, my cry in the dance. A cry for those people whom I see trying to cope with this frightening time in which I believe we are living. Either by resorting to drugs, to alcohol, or to narrow-minded and nearsighted religions.

[eerie music]

Kyrie

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

[energetic music]

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Eleison

Eleison

Eleison

Eleison

Kyrie eleison

Eleison

Eleison

Kyrie eleison

Eleison

Eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

[energetic saxophone music]

[dramatic organ music]

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison

[vocalizing]

[wolf howling]

[vocalizing]

[audience applauding]

– This is a dance that is called “The Luminaire.” It originated from my particular idea that the closest one can come to saying, “What is God?” or “What is God like?” is to say, “It is like light.” Because light is around us. It pervades, yet you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can’t box it. The dance also touches somewhat on the creation idea. So I would like to dance for you “The Luminaire.” And if you can’t hear me do the narrations, do wave your hand and I will try to speak louder. In the beginning, there was nothing. Only darkness. And cold. And emptiness. And there was no light.

[gentle saxophone and organ music]

And God, who was light, shone into the darkness. And God separated the light from the darkness. And there were suns and stars, planets and moons. And God looked among his suns and his stars, and he saw one small ball. “This one has possibilities,” God said. He shed his light upon this ball, and it became green and blue. And there was energy. And there was life.

[ethereal music]

[dramatic organ music]

And God looked again at his green and blue ball, and he said, “It is incomplete. I will make me a man in our own image.” He did so, and the man became a living soul. And God said, “He will have the power of choice. And that will be good.”

[ethereal music]

And God looked again at this creature he had made, rebellious, foolish, and brilliant. And God said, “When the light which is God “comes into his heart and into his mind, then he too will be like one of us.” And God thought, “That will be a good thing. Perhaps.”

[audience applauding]

The people who come to see us here come because they’ve heard about what’s going on here, they’re curious, they look into it. They come out to see a performance. They like it or they don’t like it. They get something out of it or they don’t get something out of it. They come back or they stay away. It’s just that simple. So consequently, the response is so honest. It’s so lacking in pretension. And it’s a wonderful way to perform like this because whatever response you get, you know it’s a genuine response, positive or negative. And we get both.

[chuckling]

But it’s honest.

[fluttering flute music]

– Daystar: “Spirit Woman” is a dance that I wrote and choreographed around 1979, I believe it was. “Spirit Woman” was written to tell a story about the spirit of the wood. It’s set in this area. The spirit is in the wood, and the wood is very much a part of this part of the country. And I created a scene in which the spirit plays a part in the community. A woman who is considered a special and holy woman of that area then sees that her community is in famine and poverty, and what should she do about it, and could she do anything? And because of her spirituality, she’s able to make a contact with the spirit. And that really is the essence of the story.

[fluttering flute music]

[rhythmic drumming]

– Narrator: The power of the spirit was strong, stronger than the woman could have imagined. And the power of the spirit threatened to drain her own life force from her. She prayed again to the four directions and she fixed her mind in a good way. She knew that she must somehow appease the spirit and obtain its medicine power in order to save her people.

[soft drumming and flute music]

[drumming tempo increases]

The woman’s struggle with the spirit continued. Then, in a moment of silence, the woman saw the spirit of the wood. She looked into its face, and its power flowed into her slowly, steadily. She had become one with the spirit. It is said that the woman became wedded to the spirit of the wood, and that to this day, she lives there with him.

[fluttering flute music]

Every winter, the earth may appear to die, but every spring, these two spirits together bring the earth back to life. The woman’s name is Makawia, meaning “The Holy Woman.”

[gentle flute music]

[audience applauding]

[audience chatting]

– This will be the last piece we will do this afternoon. It’s a duet, which we have in the past done so many, many times. We put it away for two years, and we were asked to please bring it out again. So here it is, “A Question of Harmony.” The dance deals with a situation we all face as human beings, when we strike up any kind of personal relationship or any other type of relationship with another human being. It becomes a matter of taking one personality and another differing personality, and you have to do something with that.

– Michael: Barry is a very methodical person. Barry is a very fast-moving person. Barry is a very hungry person.

[gentle classical string music]

– Barry: Well, Michael is the most unusual person I’ve ever worked with. One of the most unusual people I’ve ever known. He has a sense of integrity about himself and about what he does that you just don’t find today. You don’t find it in people. There’s an honesty about him, a sincerity about him. In working together, we are very, very different people. Our approaches to things are very, very different, and as I often have told Mike, there are so many times when I would love to hang him by his heels from one of those trees out there because he can drive me so mad at times.

[laughing]

But we understand the spirit in which that is said, you know.

[gentle classical string music]

– Michael: The thing that charms me I think perhaps the most about Barry is his ease of laughter. Barry can laugh… Things that make him laugh occur to him so quickly. And for me, I laugh much, much more seldom. I don’t laugh as much as Barry. I wish I could. That of all things I think is the thing that I see as a difference between us. And I love being around him because of that, because of that laughter. Because of that enthusiasm which he has. I have it inside, but I don’t– Somehow or another, it doesn’t get outside the way it does with Barry. And that, I treasure very much.

– Barry: He has so much ability. He has so much talent. And I feel so fortunate that I got to know this person. I feel so fortunate that our paths crossed and that we are working together because I have never met any other person or been associated with any other person with whom I could have come here and done this project with, considering what was involved.

[bright classical string music]

[audience applauding]

– Chalice Stream is a remarkable place for many reasons. It’s remarkable because of the two men who are responsible for creating it. And it’s remarkable that they had the guts and the dream, and it takes both of those, to make this thing a reality.

– Michael: This project is such a visionary project because we are working and staying alive because we love what we’re doing. Love does have something to do with it. Love not in the pedestrian sense, but love in a far more profound sense, does create here. I’ve given up, really, on trying to discover or uncover what it is. I’m enjoying it and I’m respecting it, and yet I want this to be a part of the larger world. I don’t see this as some kind of a retreat, necessarily. But I do gain immeasurably from my life here. Immeasurably.

– Barry: Chalice Stream is… It’s a vision, I think. It’s a vision of something that, in these days, seems to be disappearing so fast. A sense of integrity. A sense of integrity about one’s work, about one’s self, about one’s personal life.

[gentle piano music]