Mitchell on the warpath

by Bob Clark
Calgary Herald
February 10, 2007

Alberta Ballet is an eager collaborator in the songwriter's anti-war campaign, writes Bob Clark.

Joni Mitchell says she's on the warpath. Perhaps she's always been there.

Where once her targets were love and the breakdown of relationships, today, after something of a self-imposed hiatus, she's taking aim more than ever at the madness of war and the breakdown of the natural world.

Sitting this day in a downtown Calgary hotel restaurant to promote her upcoming collaboration with Alberta Ballet, Mitchell, who rarely gives interviews, is more than prepared to rally her loyal fans -- or "tribe," as she affectionately dubs them -- to the growing urgency of her message.

"Our host, the Earth, is dying whether people want to admit it or not," says Mitchell, 63.

Blessed with a quick wit and a down-to-earth sense of the role she can play in environmental and military matters, Mitchell displays the kind of intellectual awareness that served her well in those long-standing feuds with what she sees as hit-oriented record companies and a sloppy, dishonest press.

"Nobody realizes exactly what a dangerous position we're in," the native Albertan says. "We're on this spaceship and our leadership all around the world is punching holes in it.

"We have to co-operate globally in a redistribution of funding, which means taking resources away from the terrible waste of war. If there ever was not a time for war, this is it."

The medium this week for Mitchell's stepped-up message of imminent doom is the debut of a mixed-media collaboration between the Canadian music icon and Alberta Ballet. The show, Dancing Joni & Other Works, offers artistic director Jean Grand-Maitre's freshly minted choreography of nine Mitchell songs, including two songs from Mitchell's nearly finished new album -- her first in nearly a decade -- that is scheduled for release later this year.

"A couple of the songs just popped out," Mitchell says, quoting lines that tie into the two main themes explored in the album: "'I feel just like Geronimo used to be, as trusting as Cochise. But the White Eyes lied. He's out of whack with Nature -- and look how far his weapons reach.'

"I've been reluctant to birth this album," Mitchell says. "You know, I cross my legs -- but it's coming anyway. They all come out that way. It's like they're writing me."

Grand-Maitre's 48-minute ballet, titled The Fiddle and The Drum (from Mitchell's 1969 album Clouds), incorporating hip-hop and urban-dance movements into a contemporary ballet, will be performed by the company's 27 young dancers beneath a video installation by Mitchell, with images of some of the songwriter's latest artwork -- a series of predominantly green triptychs titled Green Flag Song -- projected at either side.

In some ways, it's a kind of homecoming for Mitchell, who was born in Fort MacLeod, Alta., in 1943 and attended art college in Calgary before her songwriting career took off in the mid-1960s.

Now living in Los Angeles, Mitchell's significant role in the ballet began in January 2006.

Grand-Maitre said he was casting around for a project that "can challenge us artistically, but at the same time interest a larger audience."

When a friend suggested incorporating songs by Mitchell, whose 40-year songwriting career has inspired musicians as diverse as Led Zeppelin and Sarah McLachlan, Grand-Maitre immersed himself in Mitchell's work.

"It was really good music for ballet," Grand-Maitre recalls. "The pulse -- not to mention the rhythm, the grooves, and the soaring melodic lines of her voice -- lends itself well to contemporary ballet vocabulary."

Accordingly, Grand-Maitre says he sent Mitchell a letter (Mitchell steers clear of e-mail) asking if she would consider creating a "world of sound, texture and colour" around which he could subsequently give life to her "poetic metaphors."

The original project was not going to require much involvement on her part, Mitchell says. "It was going to be a piece called Dancing Joni, and Jean had selected an assortment of songs that he assembled into a kind of collection."

Receiving a positive response to his letter of introduction, Grand-Maitre worked up a scenario for the ballet over the next five months, then flew to Mitchell's Los Angeles home to further discuss the project.

"I proposed a scenario based on her life," Grand-Maitre says. "But she wasn't interested in that, and told me she'd rather have us create a ballet based on themes that are relevant today."

With that, Mitchell threw herself into the project more than Grand-Maitre had ever expected. The timing was fortuitous: Mitchell was planning to release her first album in a decade and was preparing an exhibition of her visual art. All of that came together in creating Dancing Joni.

Mitchell recalls her first meeting with the choreographer coincided with preparations she was making for her big art show of her latest paintings.

"I had a model on my pool table of the way the gallery -- which had four different rooms -- was laid out," Mitchell says.

After viewing the small reproductions of the songwriter's triptychs, Grand-Maitre broached the idea of using the originals in his projected ballet bio.

The works were derived from photos Mitchell took over a six-month period of her TV screen after the aged set began displaying distorted images.

She arranged the images according to category and used one of the resulting topic books -- War, Torture and Revolution -- as the basis for her paintings.

When told by Mitchell that images of human atrocity were hardly suited to his choice of songs, Grand-Maitre suggested she select the songs.

"I said I could, but it would be my least popular material," Mitchell says.

The nine "least popular" songs she chose included Beat of Black Wings (Dog Eat Dog, 1985); For the Roses (For the Roses, 1972); Passion Play (Night Ride Home, 1991) and Sex Kills (Turbulent Indigo, 1994).

Asked whether, in the case of Dancing Joni, it's simply coincidence that everything -- dance, music and art -- came together together so well when it did, Mitchell says no.

"I was quite a bit ahead of my time."

She points out that after her sixth album (Court and Spark, 1974) "most of my work was dismissed," in large part due to its sociopolitical undertones.

"But with the coming of this government, a lot of Americans woke up, and suddenly they began to understand some of my work."

Before that, Mitchell says, "it seemed I was alone in my opinions."

"Now, however, more people are willing to look at it -- even though it's a little late, because 25 years ago it was like a line from Dylan: 'I tried to warn everybody/ But I could not get it across.'

"I tend to worry about the world, especially about nature. Every time a species dies, it affects me very painfully and personally. It's that peculiar sensitivity that colours my work."

Is she optimistic in the long run?

"No, it's impossible," Mitchell says. "But I don't rule out a miracle."