WINTER (Winter was Hard - 1938)
2002
Music: Anthony Gustav Morris - Choreography: Malaika Kusumi
Contemporary Dance with Dramatic and Multi-Media Content
2 sections each ca. 35 minutes, Music 42 minutes
Commissioned by the Malaika Kusumi Ballet Theatre in Frankfurt for a series of performances at the Gallus Theater in 2003, this piece accompanied a clever mixed media production based on interviews with witnesses of the very harsh winter of 1938. The video replay of two ladies recalling their youth activities in the German Land Army (the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth) was particularly moving with recollections of friendships and hardships. Dancer's choreography depicting school times and a teacher character whose particularly strict and almost genocidal tendencies made this an emotionally charged and on the border with controversy laden evening. The music and "soundscapes" provide an underscore for both dance and other dramatic action. I have left one of the actor's voices - Klaus Peeck - on one of the tracks to show how the music was composed to accommodate the text and set the mood. No, I am not an extremist nor do I endorse the text that is spoken - it is historical documentation in the dramatic sense and part of the complete work taken out of context.
AUDIO EXCERPTS:
2002
Music: Anthony Gustav Morris - Choreography: Malaika Kusumi
Contemporary Dance with Dramatic and Multi-Media Content
2 sections each ca. 35 minutes, Music 42 minutes
Commissioned by the Malaika Kusumi Ballet Theatre in Frankfurt for a series of performances at the Gallus Theater in 2003, this piece accompanied a clever mixed media production based on interviews with witnesses of the very harsh winter of 1938. The video replay of two ladies recalling their youth activities in the German Land Army (the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth) was particularly moving with recollections of friendships and hardships. Dancer's choreography depicting school times and a teacher character whose particularly strict and almost genocidal tendencies made this an emotionally charged and on the border with controversy laden evening. The music and "soundscapes" provide an underscore for both dance and other dramatic action. I have left one of the actor's voices - Klaus Peeck - on one of the tracks to show how the music was composed to accommodate the text and set the mood. No, I am not an extremist nor do I endorse the text that is spoken - it is historical documentation in the dramatic sense and part of the complete work taken out of context.
AUDIO EXCERPTS:
-
WINTER - Pas de Deux - StudentsTwo female students, class-mates, get to know each other - inquisitively, tenderly.
-
WINTER - Solo - SisterDramatic solo a confused girl tormented with aggressive feelings
-
WINTER - EnsembleRushing fast movement, passing by swiftly, traveling...
-
WINTER - Dialog MusicA quasi fugue as background for a scene that has the student girls being supervised and lectured by their teacher (actor).
-
WINTER - Der Lehrer - The TeacherBasically the projection of the ideals of a bigoted national socialist teacher upon a skin-head character, aggressive, violent.
