Both Sitting Duet

A trilogy about the music of movement and the sound of silence

This season the English choreographer Jonathan Burrows and the Italian composer Matteo Fargion present the third part of their trilogy about the music of movement and the sound of silence. For this occasion, we also invited them to do a rerun of the first two parts. This evening, you can see the first part,  Both Sitting Duet. On 13 and 17 February, you can see the second and the third part both in one evening.

In their trilogy, Burrows and Fargion explore the permeable boundaries between dance and music and the various ways we perceive these two forms of expression.

In Both Sitting Duet the dancer and the musician perform movements while seated on a chair, thus creating a common physical starting point. Together they execute fascinating hand and arm movements with great concentration and precision. The only music to be heard is the ‘natural’ sound that accompanies their movements. In 2003 Both Sitting Duet received a Dance and Performance Bessie Award in New York.

In The Quiet Dance both men stand upright and from this position initiate movements with a sense of amazement akin to that of a child taking its first steps and making its first sounds. The result is a combined action that is both masterly and comic and pulsates with a delight in movement.

In the third part, Speaking Dance, Burrows and Fargion transpose motionlessness into sound and/or language; it is as if the auditory aspect of communication (with each other and the audience) becomes increasingly important in the course of the three parts. How can abstract and formal means contain and/or amplify meaning? This is the question the dancer and the musician attempt to answer together even though each starts out from his own discipline.