Danza Permanente & Captiva
When Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, op. 132 in Vienna almost two centuries ago, the composer was almost completely deaf. For Danza Permanente, choreographer DD Dorvillier and composer Zeena Parkins have translated compositional structures and tonal qualities of the score into dance movements. The four dancers are each assigned to one of the four instruments. The choreography follows the musical notation down to the finest nuances and interweaves the dancing voices into an intense and dynamic stream of movement. The dancers are music made visible without the music being audible.
New York multi-instrumentalist Zeena Parkins is a pioneer of contemporary harp-playing. In the second part of the evening she presents her latest composition, Captiva, at Tanzquartier Wien. The Captiva pieces are based on a system of simple rules that, when combined, offer unlimited possibilities of musical development. Following a cosmic pattern, each individual sound makes space for the next. Captiva evolves with each concert, containing all past versions while pointing to future ones at the same time.
Composed and performed by Zeena Parkins
Electronics made in collaboration with technologist Matthew Ostrowski
Captiva is named after the location where it was first conceived: The Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, a small barrier island in the Florida Gulf.
researches the complex relationships between abstraction, gesture, spectatorship, embodiment, language, perception, sense. Before moving to France in 2010, she lived and worked in New York City for over 20 years. Some works include No Change or “freedom is a psycho-kinetic skill” (2005), Nottthing Is Importanttt (2007), Danza Permanente (2012), A catalogue of steps (an ongoing project since 2013), Diary of an Image (2014), Extra Shapes (2015), and Only One of Many (2017). Her works have been extensively presented and produced in Europe and the US. She has received numerous awards including The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art Fellowship. This year she and composer Sébastien Roux inaugurated La Corvette, a new grassroots space for research and experimentation in dance and music, in rural Burgundy. DD Dorvillier is associated artist at Le Danding CDCN in Dijon, France.
is a pioneer of contemporary harp music. The multi-instrumentalist and composer has worked with Björk, Yoko Ono, Sonic Youth, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Elliott Sharp and Butch Morris, among others. In her artistic practice, she has reinvented the instrument as a “sound machine of unlimited capacity”. To date, Parkins has built three separate, unique versions of her electronic harp, which enables her to enhance the language of the acoustic harp thanks to her creative approach to playing techniques and technical adaptations. Zeena Parkins’ collaborations and her long-standing working relationships with choreographers are the main focus of her work as a sound artist. She received three New York Bessie Awards for works jointly developed with Jennifer Monson, John Jasperse, DD Dorvillier and Neil Greenberg. She has also collaborated with filmmakers Abigail Child, Daria Martin, Mandy McIntosh and Cynthia Madansky, among others. Zeena Parkins is a Darius Milhaud professor at Mills College in Oakland, California.
Credits
Duration: 2 hrs 20 min, including one intermission
In case of sold-out performances waiting numbers for remaining tickets are handed out at the evening box office opening one hour before showtime.
Related Content
DD Dorvillier & Zeena Parkins on Danza Permanente
Artist Video
DD Dorvillier
Observing Practice: TMTW
Nicole Kühnen
Movement Analysis