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Tobias Zapfel
'Thomas Pernes
Thomas Pernes
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' Tanztheater Wien
Tanztheater Wien
CHOREOGRAPHY: Liz King
MUSIC: Thomas Pernes
CONDUCTOR: Thomas Pernes
INSTIGATOR: Manfred Biskup
SCENERY: Adi Frühauf, Liz King
COSTUMES: Esther Linley
LIGHTING: Manfred Biskup
DANCERS: Harmen Tromp, Coco Auriau, Christian Camus, Esther Linley, Katalin Lörinc, Roderich Madl
MUSISCIANS: Septet
Thomas Pernes: piano, synthesizer, computer tapes
Wolfgang Reisinger: percussion, gongs, drums
Herbert Joos: flugelhorn, bass-flugelhorn, trumpets
Jürgen Wuchner: contrabass
Christian Radovan: trombone
Wolfgang Puschnig: saxophone, flute, piccolo
Karl Fian: trumpet
Erich Dorfinger: sound arrangement
Wolfgang Musik: sound engineering
Sound equipment: Electro-voice
Realization of the tape in the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) and in the studio of the Vienna Academy of Music.
Sponsor: MOBIL OIL AUSTRIA AG
Thomas Pernes about his Music for „Thomas Zapfel“:
"In this music you will find among others: - maybe a computer program
- a pre-recorded tape in play-back
- an exact score
- aleatory gesture
- improvisation spaces
and there are also
culminations
concentrated sounds
something soft…
And all that shall lead to a music which can exist without a big programmatical background—which is almost always a makeshift solution—and has a message and is impressive.“
Thomas Pernes in June, 1984
1. ABOUT THE REALIZATION OF THE MUSIC The starting point for the production of the tape which will be used as a play-back and as the basis of the performance in the Brucknerhaus was interesting and full of tension:
In an initially very nervous studio atmosphere there should—starting from a not too exact score (from a proportional note picture via verbal characterizations to a graphically designed gesture)—be developed in this deliberately chosen notation (so as to leave space for spontaneously introduced ideas), a music, strong enough to span a period of one hour, music of a certain validity in spite (or in consequence of) the originally demanded spontaneous realization.
In order to get to the desired results from this rather difficult beginning, we needed (and, as we have to stress, we actually had): the total commitment of the musicians, their courage and their unlimited joy to solve these problems with me—the particular joy of musicians, a master in his trade each of them, a joy allowing to realize music that has the power of breaking out in order to be free for the realization of very personal, very intimate—and therefore strong—ideas, dreams and hopes.
2. WORK DESCRIPTION OF „TOBIAS ZAPFEL“ Classically Trained Mind
Thinking in terms of development over a long period, thinking in wide arches.
We put up with high concentration, a lot of brainwork in order to come to that point, from where retrospectively everything happening until then becomes logically explicable, where everything is suddenly easy to understand and from where you are carried on. Suddenly everything is quite easy. - And these are points that can be reached only so:
only by this demanded, necessary concentration, which the composer needs as well as the listener.
- these are the points or also "spaces" where one goes deeper and deeper, in advance to experiences (most subtle images of emotion), because we (the composer and the listener) have ACTIVELY created a podium that makes every sound, every motive, every tone, every rhythm sound different (and it does not go farther, for you cannot work with other than your limited material, although in many different combinations, but this does not change the material itself).
Which means: you have to practise magic with musical elements.
Just as Marcel Duchamp transforms a bottle support by putting it quasi on a pedestal (in a museum), on a pedestal built from a variety of thoughts.
These points in music may be found in every single piece in different places.
If for instance in "Le Marteau sans Maître" by Pierre Boulez the wonderful end has been reached, where the sound consists mainly of soft, resounding percussion, then this above mentioned point has been reached quite at the end.
In my Linz Music there is an example, which will be easy to watch, that here the same material is used twice—and for the second time after a development.
Here we have a f-sharp,
appearing first as centrally oriented,
which means, that the f-sharp is used as sound centre, from where one can start, but also where a goal can be found—quasi as a resolution.
(As in functionally/harmonically oriented music the "tonal music"—in the cadence the basic principle of:
Starting point—leading away—returning resolving is included.)
The first f-sharp (appearing in four sound complexes directly following each other) is the sound center.
And this first f-sharp is transformed
and made the key-note f-sharp for the second time towards the end of the piece, the key-note for a sound suspended between f-sharp major and f-sharp minor.
Here we reach a degree of resolution, which is much stronger and goes farther than the one of the first f-sharp complex, which is nevertheless not "tonal", because this f-sharp-minor-major stands free in space without functional/harmonical context, but which—if this music has been successfully made—expresses what I have defined above as
"Suddenly everything is quite easy".
Thomas Pernes, July 14th, 1984
Andrea Amort:
ANNOTATIONS TO AUSTRIA´S NON-CLASSICAL DANCING SCENE A no-one's land, a barren landscape with the ruins of a once rich dancing tradition dispersed on the surface—this was Austria's non-classical dancing scene only a few years ago. Only lately a very variegated scene developed in Vienna, based above all on the foundation of many schools.
But also Vienna's city fathers are involved through their showing interest in organizing great dance festivals, so lately "TANZ '84". ("Dance '84".)
The seed in the fields of dance and choreography sprouting now, has thus been sown only recently. The new Viennese dancing scene, lead mostly by foreign dancers settled in Austria, does not attach itself to a Viennese tradition nor does it continue one. It is rather too long ago, that Vienna could present an independent dancing life, devoted to modern dance. Such a scene had grown after the spectacular guest-performances of the American pioneers of modern dance, Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Maud Allan and Ruth St. Denis in 1907 with the first appearance of Grete Wiesenthal and her sisters, but in any case since 1934 with the transfer of the "Bildungsanstalt für Musik und Rhythmus" ("Educational institute for music and rhythm") from Hellerau near Dresden to Laxenburg near Vienna. Among the school's most famous graduates we find the dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Rosalia Chladek, living in Vienna. In the thirties the flourishing Vienna dancing scene was dominated by the dancing groups of Gertrud Bodenwieser and Gertrud Kraus as well as Ellinor Tordis and Hanna Berger. Much of this creative potential was destroyed by the Second World War. It is true that Chladek and Wiesenthal (died 1970) continued teaching their special and personal dancing style and even appeared with own ensembles. But both could not withstand the Viennese predomination of the classical ballet and – in late years—the increasing diffusion of American modern-dance techniques. Their unique historical achievements stand, in any case, without question.
That Vienna has hosted the Vienna Dance Theatre since 1982 is more than just mere coincidence. The choreographer Liz King started working in Austria for private reasons in the beginning. In the meantime Austria's only full-professional modern-dance-ensemble has gathered about British-born Liz, a group including also Viennese dancers.
Each of the three dancing founder members of the group had given up safe engagements, just in order to be free to dance their own style. The traditional world of ballet was no longer interesting to them.
What Liz King and Manfred Biskup (organization and dramaturgy), Esther Linley and Harmen Tromp have in their minds, is finding an independent, personal kind of dance theatre as an image and mirror of our time, as an indicator of the often quoted Zeitgeist—the spirit of our age.
Founded in September 1982, the Vienna Dance Theatre managed to make more than fourty appearances during the first season. They gave guest appearances in Salzburg and Linz, Frankfurt ("Festival Bestanzaufnahme") and Holland (among others "Den Haag HOT-Festival") as well as in Hungary. Lately the independent Dance Theatre has gotten its own studio. There, additional dancers are engaged on a fixed contract basis, two trainees are coached.
The choreographies of the Vienna Dance Theatre mediate stories full of conflict. Their style develops from a mixture of classical ballet, Modern Dance, Contact Improvisation and King's individual, extremely human vocabulary of movements. In her last works Liz King did not so much stress the transformation of music into dancing motion as rather danced messages.
In the beginning the choreographies dealt strongly with formalistic and spatial problems. King tried to minimalize the movements, simultaneously forcing physical performance to a tremendous extent. In "westwärts" ("westwards", 1983) the dancers had to jump with full force and to crash so hard on the ground that it verged on self-destruction. But already "On land" (1983) showed a stylistic carnation without limiting the emotional force of expression. In "Africa, Africa", King has her ensemble dancing again—in the best sense.
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