sonic bricks
“… a wall of sound, or at least a wall with some sonic bricks in it.”
UPCOMING MUSIC-THEATRE PRODUCTION (2011)
“A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing under his breath. He walks and halts to his song. Lost, he takes shelter, or orients himself with his little song as best as he can. The song is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilising, calm and stable, centre in the heart of chaos. Perhaps the child skips as he sings, hastens or slows his pace. But the song itself is already a skip: it jumps from chaos to the beginnings of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any moment. There is always sonority in Ariadne’s thread. Or the song of Orpheus.”
From “A Thousand Plateaus” by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, chapter 11, “1837: Of the Refrain”
Composer: Juliana Hodkinson
Direction and set design: Jacob F. Schokking
Text: Ursula Andkjær Olsen
Cast: Rikke Lylloff, Jakob Bloch Jespersen, Jacob Stage
Musicians: Kammerensemble für Neue Musik
Sound design & live processing: Jesper Andersen
Lighting design: Peter Plesner
VJ & digital programming: Turpin Napoleon Djurhuus
Producer: Traudi Palsbøll
Copenhagen venue: Dansescenen (April 2011)
Coproducers: Holland House, Kammerensemble für Neue Musik, Dansescenen, Wundergrund Music Festival
The child tries to cast a sonorous spell on the threat of darkness; the metre of the child’s little song sets the pace for him to mark out a circle around a secure centre. A precise illustration of a basic music-dramatic formula: finding a musical spell for a dramatic spatiality. Shaping a conflict or emotion through a musical or spatial gesture. Extracting form from chaos by throwing light into a space full of anxiety. Drawing lines, giving direction and creating contrasts, until form emerges. Establishing momentary glimpses of clarity, only to dissolve them again into the rush of emotion.
Instead of a linear narrative with a traditional dramaturgical curvature, SONIC BRICKS operates with dramatic, musical, choreographic and visual modules or “bricks”, which through repetition, transition, shaping and reshaping create a dynamic composition.