Danza Permanente: Beethoven in silence

(© Thomas Dunn)

In Danza Permanente, four dancers give physical expression to a late string quartet by Beethoven. Nothing unusual there? Well, the choreographer, DD Dorvillier, has replaced the original music by silence and a composition by the famous harpist Zeena Parkins.

In Danza Permanente, DD Dorvillier, born in Puerto Rico but now based in New York, follows in the footsteps of Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp. Some decades ago, they came up with the idea of dance to music that the public was not allowed to hear at the performance. Says Dorvillier, “I chose Beethoven’s fifteenth string quartet [Opus 132 in A minor, the “Song of Thanksgiving” – IS]. Not just because the work is deeply moving. It is also music that thinks, sound that seems itself to experience emotions. My work as a choreographer is related to American minimal art of the 1970s. In Danza Permanente, I wanted to separate form, structure, and emotion from each other in order to convert them, individually, into body and movement.”

“The first part of the score proved to be the most difficult: it took us three weeks to convert three pages,” says Dorvillier. “In the course of a series of intensive residencies in France and Belgium, we found the key, a modus operandi. Zeena Parkins, with whom I was now working for the second time, made a big contribution to that vocabulary. And not just by supplying the new music – a spare soundscape. She also took far-reaching choreographic decisions. As a result, there is also a lot of silence in the show and, at times, the stamping of the dancers’ feet plays a musical role.”

Music is colour
Danza Permanente is a very physical, intense choreography. “We wanted to make the music visible in the simplest, most direct way,” says Dorvillier. “Although this meant that bodies became string instruments, the dance turned out quite differently from what we expected. The movements may seem gentle and restrained, but the dance is hugely demanding and exhausting. All four dancers have to dance and jump non-stop for an hour. The show also contains a lot of little allusions. Our costumes, colourful shirts and shorts, have something cheerful and childlike about them. They are practical, too: in long trousers we would be bathed in sweat after just ten minutes.”

“There is a jokey side to Thomas Dunn’s lighting design too. One particular lamp, for example, stands for the first violin; and the curtains are illuminated in a warm glow whenever the emotions become more intense in Beethoven’s string quartet. But you don’t get to hear that music. The idea wasn’t just to offer a beautiful dance experience with Beethoven. We try to show how much musicality can be found in pure dance – and vice versa.”

DANZA PERMANENTE • 17 & 18/1, 20.30, €8/12/16, Kaaitheater, square Sainctelettesquare 20, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-201.59.59, www.kaaitheater.be