Classical music and Ventriloquist Dance:

Abstract

The film RHYTHM IS IT! (2004) by Thomas Grube and Enrique Sánchez that records the educational project of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle follows the process in which 250 youngsters, previously strangers to classical music, danced to Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. Observing the Berlin Philharmonic during a rehearsal of Le Sacre in 2003 (documented in Rhythm is it), French dancer and choreographer Xavier Le Roy decided to work on Stravinsky's classic from an interest in the movements of conducting. Having no musical training, Le Roy ventured into a laborious process of studying a conductor's interpretation as if it were choreography of its own. As he states: “an inversion of cause and function unfolds: the gestures and the movements that are meant to prompt musicians to play appear at the same time to be produced by the music they are supposed to produce”. Le Roy’s Le Sacre du Printemps (2007) (performed in 2009 in Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon) provokes questions about the relationship of movement, image and sound. In this paper I will investigate ventriloquial dimensions of those relations, and my focus will be in discussing if, how and why those relations problematize the status and function of “classical music” in relation to contemporary dance.