Under the choreographic direction of Meryl Tankard, the Zurich Ballet presents a new version of Ballet mécanique, entitled “For Hedy.” The performance is scored to music by George Antheil, arranged for piano and 64-channel electronics by Paul Lehrman and Guy Livingston; and performed by Guy Livingston at the piano.
Nine performances of “Timekeepers” at the Zurich Opera House as follows: 20, 21, 26 January 2, 4, 9, 17, 18, 23 February programme: For Hedy, Les Noces, Rhapsody in Blue
Timekeepers The «golden» 1920s have gone down in history as a time of ecstatic cultural and technological advancements. This production, entitled Timekeepers, brings three works from that decade that prominently feature piano, all premiered a century ago. The evening will also see three female choreographers from three different generations. The world premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces, which took place in 1923 with the Ballets Russes in Paris, rewrote music and ballet history. Stravinsky paired a mixed choir with a lineup of four pianos and a percussion ensemble for this dance cantata, which retraces the course of a traditional wedding ceremony. Choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, the sister of Vaslav Nijinsky, accentuated the neoclassical angularity of Stravinsky’s music with constructivist groupings of dancers, pyramid-like setups, and hard, angular, stomping movements. With Nijinska’s legendary Les Noces choreography, the Ballett Zürich dances a key work of the 20th century.
In the audience of Les Noces in Paris was a young American, whose extravagant lifestyle and rhythmically driven, mechanically-controlled music soon earned him the title of a «Bad Boy of Music»: George Antheil. His most famous work is the Ballet mécanique, which he revised several times. Its first version was intended to be music for a surrealist-Dadaist film by Fernand Léger. Meryl Tankard makes her debut with the Ballett Zürich. Australia’s best-known choreographer will bring the piece to the stage in a version for piano and loudspeakers under the title For Hedy. Meryl Tankard began her career dancing with the Australian Ballet and with the im Tanztheater Wuppertal under Pina Bausch. She has since made an international name for herself between the worlds of classic and modern dance.
When he premiered Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, George Gershwin wanted to give Americans their own musical identity and, with the help of music, overcome ethnic and cultural barriers. One hundred years later, the young South African choreographer Mthuthuzeli November explores Gershwin’s «musical kaleidoscope of America» in Rhapsodies. Mthuthuzeli November currently lives in London, and is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards, including the Lawrence Olivier Award, for his creations. Mthuthuzeli November has long been more than an insider tip in Great Britain, and this marks his first collaboration with the Ballett Zürich
Stilte bestaat niet, volgens pianist en promovendus Guy Livingston.
Ook naar stilte kun je luisteren, vindt pianist Guy Livingston, die in Leiden promoveert en een geluidloos kunstwerk maakte dat inmiddels in een baan om de aarde draait.
Quiet Spheres, an artwork by Guy Livingston, which is currently orbiting the earth
My artwork consists of two parts: a musical instrument which remains on earth, and five spheres which travel into space. The electronic musical instrument vibrates below the reach of human hearing. But as soon as the miniature spheres are placed on the surface, the sound becomes audible, and you can hear the music.
The five spheres are made of five different materials (steel, silver, pearl, howlite, lodolite). Each sphere has its own mass, color, reflectivity, and texture. Each also has its own sound when placed on the instrument. While in their transparent space gallery, they will move around in microgravity, rotating around each other, bumping into each other and into the sides of the cube. Each one influences the others, in an ever-changing artwork, a slow dance. And they make tiny sounds, which only they can hear.
testing the gallery in extreme conditionseventually to the moon?fish-eye view of the galleryhow it’s builtassembled Nanoracks blockgallery in titanium boxgetting ready for packinginstallationconcept photodelivering the payload to NASApayload cylinderloading into the rocketan Antares rocket launch
The five spheres are voyaging on the International Space Station, and will stay there for the duration of the mission. Meanwhile, back on earth, I have also built a musical instrument, which ‘activates’ the spheres. Imagine a flat board with five speakers embedded in it. Each speaker is vibrating on a low frequency, too low for human ears to hear. But as soon as one of the tiny spheres is placed on its speaker, the sound is suddenly audible.
The musical instrument is called the “QSI” (for Quiet Spheres Instrument). While the spheres are traveling on the ISS, the QSI will be silent, even though it continues to vibrate at low frequency. But when the spheres are re-placed on the instrument, its vibrations will be suddenly audible. The spheres will bounce up and down on the speakers, creating a buzzing sound, and also a visual demonstration of their activity.
materials used in Quiet Spheres
The QSI project deliberately illustrates several concepts – one is my admiration for the random, never-repeated motion of the bouncing spheres; and the other is my interest in silence. Why would silence be important to our understanding of our relationship to outer space? The moon, after all, is essentially silent. But the sun is not, nor is the earth. The International Space Station itself is quite noisy. Yet space itself is silent, and I like to imagine that the QSI provides an illustration of that – when we remove the spheres from the instrument, it is like removing the atoms from a bell jar – we create a vacuum – whether scientific or artistic.
This artwork is inspired by vibrations, cycles, and the attraction and repulsion of bodies in space. The spheres themselves have a mysterious quality – they contain the possibility of making music, but only do so when placed on the instrument. The instrument plays its own eternal music. Indeed the spheres will become voyagers, not telling their story until they return to earth. Their constant bumping during the trip will ensure that they have slightly changed. Their sound will be different when they return to us.
I tried to incorporate some themes of silence and movement, quietness and activity, into my artwork. Although I have been designing artist boxes for years, this is the smallest one I ever made, at just under 1 cubic centimeter. “Quiet Spheres” is inspired by the 5 LaGrange points in outer space, which are gravitationally ‘neutral’ in relation to the earth and the sun (or the moon). My artwork is part of the Moon Gallery, which is currently orbiting the earth every 90 minutes on the International Space Station.
Hubble image (NASA)Hubble image (NASA)Guy with Moon Gallery Artists at Space Expo (NL)Lecturing about sound in spaceperforming at Space Expo
is silence tangible?
More about Silence
Suggested reading list on silence
John Cage: Silence (this is the bible of John Cage fans – full of insight and anecdotes)
Kyle Gann: No Such Thing as Silence (Gann was head music critic for the Village Voice)
Salomé Voegelin: Silence and Noise (a modern take on sound art)
Douglas Kahn: Noise Water Meat (a controversial rebuttal of many preconceived ideas)
Film: Die große Stille (a mystical documentary about a french monastery)
Movie: The Sound of Noise (Swedish alternative detective movie, hilarious, cult)
Suggested listening list
Arvo Pärt
Meredith Monk
Hildegaard Westerkamp
Pauline Oliveros
medieval music of the école de Notre Dame: especially Leonin and Pérotin