Details

I’m Leaving You is a solo movement work that imagines the internal emotional landscape of a person in the second after someone says to them: 'I’m leaving you.' This second is extended over 8 minutes of Butoh inspired movement to a score composed and played by Somerville. These Brighton performances will be a world premier of the work. First Piano Concerto is a solo dance/performance art work that explores issues of one-ness - being alone in a crowd and an individual’s journey to self acceptance and autonomy in society; being at one (in concert) with the world. The work questions notions of virtuosity and the live-ness of performance placing emphasis on focus and artistry. First Piano Concerto inverts the usual paradigm of classical music performance where live music is presented in the composer’s absence. In First Piano Concerto only the composer is present and forms the live aspect of the work. The movement language is based on a fusion of the artist’s interests: the interiority and focus of Butoh, the expressive hyper-reality of neo-burlesque and the manipulation of time through extended emotions, found in operatic performance. The score, the ‘piano concerto’ of the title, has been created through musical improvisation and computer manipulation of sound material but using structural forms of classical composition, while owing much to the repeated patterns of minimalism. My Egypt Stories is an opera, in three acts played concurrently, for one performer and recorded and collected sounds. The work includes movement, voice and narration overlaid with music. As a former journalist, from 2001 Somerville investigated in the entrapment via Internet dating sites and subsequent persecution of gay men in Egypt by the police. This association with Egypt is merged with his previous more touristic exposure to the country, a sexual awakening in the temple of Karnak as a teenager and the associations engendered by representations of Egypt in European opera. Duration 60mins

Cast/Performers

Daniel Somerville