Concert & Dance Performance
Contemplations into the Radical Others: Exacerbated Movement
Agnese Toniutti / Lucia Dlugoszewski / Katherine Duke / Erick Hawkins Dance Company
Lucia Dlugoszewski at the timbre piano Gerali © Library of Congress
In the second part of “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, Agnese Toniutti returns to MaerzMusik to broaden her ongoing exploration of Lucia Dlugoszewski’s work. Along with Katherine Duke and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, the pianist will adapt pivotal pieces from the composer’s oeuvre.
Like composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, pianist Agnese Toniutti explores the possibilities of the piano far beyond its keyboard. Last year, Toniutti presented her interpretations of Dlugoszewski’s work for the timbre piano at MaerzMusik as part of “Contemplations into the Radical Others”. On her return to the festival, the interdisciplinary artist and scholar is expanding her focus: based on Dlugoszewski’s decades-long collaboration with the dance company of her partner Erick Hawkins. Toniutti collaborates with Katherine Duke for a series of performances in which the former student of Hawkins and current director of his company has reconstructed the choreography of pieces by Dlugoszewski, such as “Fountain in the Middle of the Room” and the 1963 masterpiece “Cantilever”.
“Contemplations into the Radical Others” is a research project on Lucia Dlugoszewski launched by MaerzMusik with Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Katherine Duke and Agnese Toniutti. After kicking off last year, the endeavour continues with a deeper exploration of the life and work of the composer, who died in 2000. Dlugoszewski, who was also active as a poet, studied with Edgard Varèse, Grete Sultan and John Cage in the late 1940s, impressed Arnold Schönberg with her piano playing and sought ways to create new sounds in her work on the prepared piano. She also designed over a hundred instruments, some of which have been reconstructed for “Contemplations into the Radical Others” by Musikfabrik member Thomas Meixner. Dlugoszewski’s exploration of the seemingly mundane as well as the radically different focussed on the immediacy of music. Not only did she work behind the scenes as a composer for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, she often performed poetically on stage next to the dancers. In collaboration with the Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, her work is brought to the fore with the same style in which she originally conceived it: as an expression of the freedom of sound, which in turn is meant to offer the audience moments of freedom. The ensemble is now presenting some of its pieces for the first time in Europe after painstakingly reconstructing the scores from existing recordings. In addition to a concert evening with Musikfabrik, three commissioned works in response to Dlugoszewski and a comprehensive laboratory that will thoroughly examine and discuss her music, sound and philosophy, the second part of “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, features performances by pianist Toniutti and choreographers Duke and Edivaldo Ernesto with members of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company along with Berlin-based dancers. Three commissioned works by Bethan Morgan-Williams, Mazyar Kashian and Elena Rykova will also be performed as part of the project, offering an artistic response to Dlugoszewski.
Programme
Lucia Dlugoszewski
Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) I, II + Fountain in the middle of the room (1997, rev. 2000)
for timbre piano and solo dance
Henry Cowell
The tides of Manaunaun (1912)
for piano
The Banshee (1925)
for string piano
Eleanor Hovda
Spring Music with Wind (1973)
for piano
Alan Hovhaness
Shalimar op 177 (1950, rev. 1951)
for piano
Music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, choreography by Erick Hawkins
Cantilever (1963)
for piano and four dancers
Agnese Toniutti – piano, timbre piano
Erick Hawkins, Lucia Dlugoszewski – choreography
Katherine Duke – staging
Kristina Berger, Juan Corres, Laia Vancells Pi, Marco Rizzi – dancers
Deanna Berg Mac Lean, Erick Hawkins – costumes