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Dicing with death and resurrection
A demanding work that stares wide-eyed at the material realities of the finite human body
The performance and its inspiration an image from Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1543)
[(L to R) Brian Hartley; Ruben Grassi/creative Commons]
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Red Note Ensemble, Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh Fringe
PETER MAXWELL DAVIES dices with death and resurrection in Vesalii Icones, his little known composition, that was presented by Red Note Ensemble at Greyfriars Kirk as part of the Edinburgh Festival fringe. It is a musical mash-up of the Passion of Christ and the first illustrated book of human dissection published by the pioneering Italian anatomist Vesalius in 1543.
Maxwell Davies’s touch of genius was to write the presence of a dancer into the score with the instruction to perform in the midst of six musicians “ad libitum,” or “at one’s pleasure.”
The part amounts to one of the greatest challenges available in the repertoire of contemporary dance. The dancer must channel the contradictory impulses that underlie the composition: the sacred and the profane, the violent, the arbitrary and the mystical. He must perform the cruelty with tact and taste.
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