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Christopher Hampson,
Choreographers Diary, Pt 1 | |||||||
Christopher Hampson, a dancer and young choreographer with ENB, is keeping a diary for us on the creation of his next piece. The premiere is in Truro in April 1998.
Sunday 9th November 1997 Having had no knowledge of Grainger, other than Country Gardens, I'm having a great time going into CD shops and clearing them out of everything that Percy ever dished up. This is not a strange fetish for adapted folk-music I'm cultivating, it is all research to feed my very real fetish for choreography. English National Ballet have commissioned a ballet from me for the Mid-Scale tour in April. I now have five months to create a one act ballet for piano, dancers and an audience. So far I have the music, a designer who doesn't yet know he's designing it and a hangover. When you're rehearsing Nutcracker in the studio, every day of every week, you get used to listening to Tchaikovsky dribbling away in the background. However, this morning I listened to an arrangement of the Waltz of the Flowers made by Percy Grainger. Normally the opening bars are enough to remind me of various uninspiring rehearsals and performances I've been involved with, but there I was listening to it ('Dished up for Piano' - The Complete Piano Music Nimbus Records NI 1 767 Martin Jones - Piano) on my day off while I was smoking my breakfast. Something happens when Grainger gets his teeth into a piece of music you've heard a thousand times before. He puts physical emotion into the piano, he writes enjoyment into the score itself.
Usually in ballet, the music is there, and then some choreographer attempts to "illustrate" the music. This piece doesn't leave any room for choreography but there are plenty that do. Another fluffy thing about Grainger is that by using his music I've solved the problem of finding a score which can easily be orchestrated to almost any size as he seems to have arranged his works for every conceivable combination of instruments large and small. Tomorrow I go on tour to Southampton (premiere of Derek Deane's Nutcracker ). I'll be taking with me all nine CDs and hopefully within the next few weeks, I will have compiled a score. Then all I need to do is add water and make a ballet. I must remember to inform my designer that he's got a job. If I forget, could someone please email me at c_hampson@hotmail.com to remind me. A couple of Grainger sites on the Internet:
http://www.hnh.com/composer/grainger.htm | ||||||||
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