http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/arts/music/on-behalf-of-nature-meredith-monks-wild-side.html 2014-12-05 00:55:13 ‘On Behalf of Nature,’ Meredith Monk’s Wild Side In “On Behalf of Nature,” Meredith Monk’s dance becomes a provocative advocate for the natural world. === At the That’s She celebrates 50 years of performance this season, mostly by holding the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, which will host First performed at U.C.L.A. in January 2013, it takes cues from an essay by the poet Gary Snyder, “ It would be simplistic to call “On Behalf of Nature” a climate-change piece, for If “On Behalf of Nature” placidly lacks the avant-garde force of Ms. Monk’s early work, the role is one she seems born to play. There’s little obvious narrative here, little text, little to help orient the viewer if a mime escapes comprehension. A brief interlude of projected film splices cells and insects with artillery and an earth shot from an Apollo mission. Certain dance configurations evoke graphs of primate-to-human development. And Yoshio Yabara’s costumes root the animal in the human in a bricolage of the performers’ own, real-life clothes. But for the most part, you’re left to your own imagination. As ever, Ms. Monk is magnetic. Her vocal music is cast in a virtuosic, tight counterpoint of coos and chitters, emulating bird calls at one moment, yelping atop a purely musical glissando the next. The instrumental writing for percussion, winds, keyboards, violin and horn feels more familiar, a mingling of Feldmanesque stasis and Reichian pulses. Yet the piece demands to be seen and heard, if not, like nature itself, fully understood.