For the second time during Springdance, artists and audience share the stage of Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg. REDUX ORCHESTRA, conducted by composer Ari Benjamin Meyers, plays his Symphony X, a pulsating, up-beat (120 p/m) minimal work. Spectators, conductor and musicians - can you just call them musicians? - merge into one big, extremely subtle, participatory choreography by Tino Sehgal.
Through corridors normally used only by artists and technicians, the audience streams into the theatre's stage house. The scented wood of the unpainted stage floor briefly brings to mind the usually heavily waxed floors of the classical music hall. Monumental by height but otherwise bare and technical, the stage with closed fire screen provides an ideal, instant industrial concert hall. Here and there are some music stands, a hefty drum kit and some amplifiers.
The first move in choreography is for the audience in the chairless environment to ponder where and how they will spend the announced hour and a half. When the 16-member ensemble enters, instruments in hand, there is a moment of recognition. But instead of lining up in a closed formation around the conductor, the musicians scatter around the room, some even sitting with their backs to the conductor.
The play has only just begun, or Seghal deploys the first of quite a few layers of darkness. Bold for the performance of a wildly difficult piece, you might say. It throws all present back into the same bath of rhythm and sound. Everyone now has to rely on their ears, is confronted with their own situation, part or party in the play. Some audience members also take that role very actively. A slightly exhibitionist gentleman, when the lights go up, does not stop hopping and fluttering along, between the spectators and musicians. Spectators swing along, others sit or stand, but constantly the whole stage is in motion.
The musicians change places, walk around, swing their instruments, sometimes leave the floor. The live amplification plays a game with which instruments rise above the layers of syncopation. If you want, as a spectator, you can also sit at the controls yourself by moving from musician to musician and, for example, take a moment to give the lone violinist a special hearing.
Meyer's excited "Symphony X" is an homage to the neo-minimal and no-wave of the likes of Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham of the late 1970s, early 1980s. But with its line-up of mostly horns, a drummer, two strings, a bass and a percussion guitarist, the symphony also refers to big band and rock, post-punk and industrial. In all its complexity, the composition constantly plays with all kinds of sound conventions and types of swing. The most impressive thing about the work is the enormous, sustained commitment that the 120 beats per minute demands from conductor and musicians. It is 70 minutes of non-stop intensity.
"Symphony X" premiered back in 2009, but Meyers felt that the static situation, in which new music is also usually performed, did the piece no favours. Tino Sehgal, who has been creating a furore as an artist for a decade by staging unusual situations, suggested that audiences and musicians should be moved from their fixed spots and the physical separation lifted.
In the Springdance Magazine Meyers says he is not interested in finding his own "musical language", but that his artistry lies in finding new ways of working. This attitude also marks Sehgal. Seghal's subtle relief of musical composition has been given a mis-en-scène, culminating Saturday night in a highly contemporary pas de deux for spectators and musicians, music and movement, light and dark, composed time and lived space.
The festival could not have wished for a better conclusion to 34 years of Springdance. All the multi-, inter- or überdisciplinary developments of the past decades ultimately appear to flow back into that one concept called choreography. Text and context connected by the movements of all those present on those mutually implicating axes of space and time. That's dance. Let's hope new Spring Festival manages to programme such intelligent surprises.
http://www.aribenjaminmeyers.com/selected-projects/SYMPHONY-X.html
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