Most musicians work with sound, but Larry Polansky, a professor of music at the College, will follow his interest in performance in exactly the opposite direction. As a recipient of the New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, Polansky will immerse himself in the silent discourse of American Sign Language in order to eventually study and compose ASL poetry.
The fellowship is awarded to a university faculty member who wishes to explore a new academic direction. Polansky, who is not proficient in ASL, plans to use the award to become fluent in the language.
"It was, I admit, a very unusual thing for a composer," Polansky said of his interest in ASL. He explained that ASL appealed to him both because he considered it a beautiful language and because it was the exact opposite of music.
Music, he said, consists of noise without an objective meaning.
"You can't say, 'That's a cat,' through music," he noted. He contrasted this with ASL, a language of pure meaning without any sound.
He also noted the parallels between the two mediums.
"It does have a lot to do with rhythm, with form, with structure, and those are the things I've spent my life as a performer doing," he said.
Once he becomes fluent in ASL, Polansky said he hopes to be able to make intelligent decisions about how to study and compose ASL poetry.
There is already a great deal of research on ASL poetry, Polansky said, but most current research considers the poetry from a literary perspective. Such analysis focuses on the symbolism and words themselves rather than the physical aspects of the performance. Much of the traditional ASL poetry, he added, tends to be narrative in style and often involves themes of deafness and the experiences of the deaf community.
Some younger artists, however, are creating poetry that straddles the boundaries of narration and kinetic performance he said. This is not the same as da nce, he noted, because each movement is a meaningful word.
"I'm hoping that my perspective, not coming from the literature world, will perhaps shed a new light on some of the existing expressions of the poetry, but also focus some of the attention on younger artists and emerging artists and performers that are diverging from more traditional ASL poetry," he said.
Polansky said that he hopes ASL could someday be taught at Dartmouth and that he would love to teach a class with a deaf scholar in order to bring that unique perspective to the College.
He also emphasized both his respect for deaf culture and the long journey ahead of him.
"It's a very humble ambition -- I hope to get to the point where I can make some kind of contribution," he said of his studies.
The New Direction Fellowship is awarded in early April to up to 14 scholars per year. The award allows recipients to take a term of leave from their universities in order to explore a new academic interest.
