After a series of highly-acclaimed European performances across 2021-2023, HEAR EYES MOVE – Dances with Ligeti (created by award-winning dance artist and choreographer, Elisabeth Schilling) will visit St. Andrews at The Byre Theatre (17 October – 6:30pm) and Aberdeen’s Music Hall (21 October – 8:00pm) for two new exclusive Scottish touring dates this autumn – the performance’s only UK dates.
A celebration of Hungarian genius-composer György Ligeti’s recent 100th birthday, HEAR EYES MOVE – Dances with Ligeti is a syncretic, highly inventive dance-concert performance that sees Schilling choreographically interpret Ligeti’s iconic, avant-garde piano études through both movement and sound for the stage.
Joined live by pianist Cathy Krier and five dancers, Schilling’s choreography employs ideas of sensation and feeling to Ligeti’s theory of sound movement and development as its own growing organism – something we can both listen to and feel as a unique creative system of relationships, “a tactile form… a succession of muscle tensions.”
theQR was lucky enough to ask Elisabeth three questions in advance of the show’s arrival on Scottish soil…
What uniqueness does Ligeti offer to you as a choreographer and dancer?
When I listened to music by György Ligeti for the first time in 2011, it was love on the first note. For me, the music was a rich buffet of colours, textures and complex rhythmicalities which offered a fertile ground for inspiration. As I researched Ligeti’s compositional concepts in greater depth in the past years, I was moreover inspired by how he was able to connect diverse inspirations into a musical composition: he was heavily influenced by mathetmathics, especial fractal geometry, physics, chaos theory and the philosophy on clock and cloud systems by Karl Popper. And he equally loved Alice in Wonderland or the drawings of Piet Mondrian or Mauritz Escher. On the first look, these concepts and inspiration points seem far apart, but they do have similarities and just offer such a rich diversity of ideas and associations, which we definitely used in our dance. Next to the scientific research, it was also the deep emotionality that I personally very much connect with in his music and that inspired the dance as much as the scientific background.
Could ‘HEAR EYES MOVE’ work without live musicians?
Yes, we have performed this work without live music at the Fetsival Off in Avignon this summer. We certainly prefer the work being performed with live music though as it brings such a layer of intensity, presence, risk and liveliness to the work.
You’re pulling together creatives from multiple countries, age brackets, and levels of experience…is this rewarding? (Does it ever make you want to pull your hair out?)
Of course it is! I wished we could be more diverse and this is something I am very much striving for in the future. The dance world has a history of idealisms that are deeply unhealthy and need to be rethought. The diversity itself in my company never ever pulls my hair out 😉 but other things in this business certainly do 😉!
Clearly a passion project, ‘HEAR EYES MOVE – Dances with Ligeti’ promises to be a must-see event in Scotland’s cultural calendar. In theQR’s experience, previous knowledge of composer or performer will prove no barrier to enjoyment. Ambition married to complete investment is an infectious recipe, and with such a rich diversity of talent involved, the prospect is beyond promising. So let’s hope that Scotland gives Elisabeth Schilling a warm welcome in the middle of October!
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