In Al di Là Jacopo Godani creates a brand-new context for Schönberg’s musical composition:Transfigured Night. He renews the invitation for the public to enter another world; to contemplate what the illusion of endless transformations, and the appropriation of life might look like.
Through the artful use of choreography, costumes and set design, the dancers metamorphose into living beings. Living beings on their path to perform something that doesn’t yet exist. The process of becoming human appears to be entrusted to their will, and their bodily movements carry traits of abstract storytelling. This aesthetic approach to the experience of metamorphosis restores it to a poetic world. And the stage, as representational space, grows into a mythical narrative.
Arnold Schönberg’s Transfigured Night is a string sextet for two violins, two violas, and two cellos by Arnold Schönberg that dates to 1899. It is one of the composer’s most-performed pieces. Transfigured Night is a kind of tone poem – that is, an instrumental composition with plot content for orchestra. Schönberg transferred the idea of symphonic poetry to the realm of chamber music. He arranged the original string sextet for string orchestra in 1917. This version is the basis of Godani’s choreography.
Al di Là
Choreography Jacopo Godani
Light, Stage, Costumes Jacopo Godani
Light Operator Jochen Göpfert
Music Arnold Schönberg, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), op. 4, (c) Universal Edition AG Wien
Under-Cover Stage Set Matthias Bringmann
Length 31 min / 5 dancers
World Premiere 21 February 2018, Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company, HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden
