Music for Dance
Koong
Music for dance
2 dancers, 4 percussionists and electronics, 2010
- ROM Iconic Ming Tomb: General Zu Dashou
Koong is a work for dance, percussion and soundtracks, wand was premiered on 7-9 May 2010 during the CanAsian International Dance Festival concert in Toronto’s , Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). The score is performed by The TorQ Percussion Quartet. Dance and choreography performed by Vancouver’s Moving Dragon Dance (Jessica Jone and Chengxin Wei).
This work receives its inspiration from General Zu Dashou, a legendary in Chinese history, who was celebrated for his defense of the Ming dynasty against the Manchu invasion. The composition incorporates the play of changing perspectives between anachronistic time. The ostinato military-like percussion is integrated with samples of frozen Chinese choirs, evoking a haunting resurrection. The live dance component will ponder upon the gestures, and bring this reverent supplanted space into life again.
Click here for a listen:
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You can see a video on The Tomb of General Zu Dashou (Ming Tomb), which now stands in the Gallery of Chinese Architecture and is one of the Museum’s iconic objects.
- Chengxin Wei
- Jessica Jone
Triaspora
Music for dance
for Erhu (Chinese Violin), Zheng (Chinese Zither), Percussion, pre-recorded soundtracks, single-chanel projected digital video, and dance. August 2007
Commissioned by the Orchid Ensemble, with dance choreography by Moving Dragon: Jessica Jone and Chengxin Wei and video images by multimedia artists Kenneth Newby and Aleksandra Dulic. Triaspora, also features music by Jin Zhang, Mark Armanini and Ta-wen Wang.
Triaspora is a cultural exploration of the Chinese Canadian experience through music, dance and interactive multimedia. The multi-media production incorporates Asian traditions with contemporary expression, which results in an elating mix of style, movement and sound. Triaspora draws on numerous interviews from different generations of Chinese Canadians, while examining the search for cultural identity and social acceptance.
Overture, the opening movement of this project, reflects the crossing of three disciplines – music, dance and multimedia. It also has a structure built upon three themes: fire, water and travel. Water, which at one time covered Vancouver’s Chinatown and carried the immigrants to this “new” country, symbolizes their emergence from a repressed world to a new frontier. Like water, which changes its form in natural cycles, the Chinese community continues to transform and renew with each generation. The fire that burned down Nanaimo’s Chinatown in 1960 is also a symbol of rebirth. Traveling is a familiar reality for the immigrant generation. Overture includes original interview material from a cross-section of Chinese Canadian individuals.
Creatively, this work utilizes a mixture of improvisatory and set instrumental material, which is overlapped with pre-recorded text and instrumentation. The balance between these three elements is achieved via the live performance, where each element is amalgamated into the overall texture of the movement. Though traditionally not a true “overture”, the work is titled as such, as it represents an introduction of materials, voice characters, and instrumentation, which is dealt with in detail later in the show: surrounding water, fire, and travel. This work is stylistically influenced by the use of traditional Chinese instrumentation and contemporary music. Instrumentation includes the zheng, (Chinese zither), the erhu (Chinese violin), and percussion (marimba, and various metallic gongs and cymbals).
Choreography/Dance – Jessica Jone and Chenxing Wei of
Moving Dragon Dance Company
Composers – Michael Vincent, Jin Zhang, Mark Armanini and Ya-wen Wang
Media Artists – Kenneth Newby and Aleksandra Dulic
Lighting designer – Kimberly Plough
Technical and Stage Manager – Stanley Ma
Costume Design – Linda Chow
Producer – Lan Tung
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Generation X – The Opera
A contemporary spoken word opera
for 3 spoken word artists, piano, trombone, alto saxophone, cello, percussion, soundtracks and projected images, March 2006
A multimedia spoken word chamber opera composed and adapted by yours truly. Story based on the famed novel of the same title, written by Canadian author Douglas Coupland.
Generation X – The Opera is a social satire about three members of Generation X – Dag, Andy, and Claire, who have moved to Palm Springs, California to escape the superficial and overly commercialized trappings of North American society. In the process, they tell each other stories, some about their lives and some made up to represent aspects of their lives.
Through the stories the characters tell, we see examples of how life is for members of Generation X. Stuck with their only career choices being in the service industry, being forced to live with the commercialism that is all around them, and being unable to afford housing, their generation lives a bleak life that is only getting bleaker. The only hope for the characters is to leave behind the lives they live and find new ones without the trappings of modern society.
Generation X stars spoken word artist Brendan McLeod (reigning National Individual Champion at the Canadian SpokenWordlympics, awarded to the top SLAM poet in Canada.) Barbara Adler (three-time member of the acclaimed Vancouver SLAM team,) and RC Weslowski (Old school Canadian spoken word extraordinaire.) The music is performed by one of Canada’s leading new music groups Ensemble Symposium. Visual slides will be composed in collaboration with Nariman Mousavi. Lighting design is by David Balfour. Stage management by Chris Walts. The production business management is ably assisted by Mylène Vincent, with graphic design by Heather Blakemore. With the help of our title sponsor Laboval Inc. and our proud fiscal sponsor, La Scena Musicale, the support of the School for the Contemporary Arts, and my esteemed academic supervisors David MacIntyre and Barry Truax, the production premiered at SFU Theatre on Friday, March 17th, 2006.
Audio excerpt:
Generation X – The Opera: Scene 10 – Grow Flowers
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Just Barely
Music for dance
for electroacoustic score and images featuring the voice of Canadian Pianist Glenn Gould. April, 2005
Commissioned by the Off-Centre Dancers, with choreography by Jennifer Mascall and video by Jacqueline Levitin performed April 8th & 9th 2005 at SFU Theatre, Vancouver BC.
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