Trio SR9 - Alors, on danse ? (Transcr. for Three Marimbas) (2018) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

« Be quiet and dance! », these few words are the last ones that Elektra says in the opera by Strauss and Hofmannsthal. They embody the power of dance, its vital strength, mystic and symbolic. When her brother Oreste has achieved their revenge by killing their mother Clytemnestre and her lover Egisthe, Elektra can only feel elated and victorious. No more talking, no other action to be taken but the dancing, the movement. As if dance was the best comment and the most perfect of all the conclusions, she invites everybody to join her and form a circle. The flood of energy is so strong that it kills her. But her dancing is joy, triumph and trance, probably madness too.

Dance as a stylisation of the movement associated to music has always been highly considered by philosophers. Nietzsche’s Zarathoustra declares that he could only “believe in a God who could dance”. Because dance transforms heaviness in lightness, and that is the mission of Dionysos, the God of life instinct. Nietzsche summarizes his thoughts in “The Gay Science” when he says: “I do not see what the spirit of a philosopher could desire most but to be a good dancer”. Poetry and literature also took over dance and Beaudelaire gives its own definition: “it is poetry with arms and legs, it is the material, gracious and terrible, animated and improved by the movement”.

A journey is also movement in space and time and this record travels through three dimensions of dance: the suite of baroquedances, the popular dances and the mystical dances. The Crooked Dances (Danses de travers, 1897) by Satie are the common thread running through the different stages and dimensions of the itinerary.
The baroque suite mainly represents a pastiche of those operas from the 18th century mixing and gathering various composers. It is an invitation to travel across the Baroque Europe with the Frenchmen Forqueray, Couperin and Rameau, the English Purcell, the Italian Scarlatti and the Germans Haendel and Bach. Although the baroque dances were not always intended to be danced, they belong to the long tradition of dance music and they were printed out in the form of tablature at the beginning of the Renaissance period.

Composers of the 19th century were inspired by the national and folkloric dances because they also invite to a virtual trip. In that respect, the Styrian tarantella (1890) by the French Claude Debussy is a hybrid between southern Italy, where the tarantella comes from, and southern Austria, where the region of Styria is located. The countries of Central Europe are represented by the Romanian Dance (1910) by the Hungarian Bartók and, travelling further to the Eastern countries, Asia vibrates with the Polovtsian Dances (1890) by the Russian Borodine, dances that he fantasizes as being those of a former nomadic tribe in the northern Black Sea area called the Cumans.

David danced in front of the Arch and the liturgical dances animated Christian spirituality in the West for more than a thousand years because dance has always been associated to religion, magic and the dead. In the Ritual Fire Dance by Manuel De Falla, extracted from his ballet ‘Love, the sorcerer’ (1915), the young gipsy Candela dances to make contact with the spirits. His dance is trance and magic. Lastly, with Narnchygäer, the French composer of Armenian origin François Tashdjian imagines a three head devil who enrols his victims and makes them dance to death. With the sound of the three marimbas, we can already picture Alexandre, Paul and Nicolas playing the rosewood bars in a choreographed gesture…

Now, shall we dance?

Nicolas Dufetel

Tracklist:

1. Allemande de la Suite pour Trois violes 2’40
Antoine Forqueray (1672 - 1745)

2. Courante de la Suite pour clavecin n°4 HWV 437 1’35
Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685 - 1759)

3. Gavotte de la Sonate pour clavecin en Ré mineur K.64 1’43
Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757)

4. Bourrée Les Nations "L'impériale" 1’05
François Couperin (1668 - 1733)

5. Sarabande de la Suite en La 2’26
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 -1764)

6. Menuet - n°13 des Vingt pièces pour clavier 1’01
Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695)

7. Gigue de la Suite Française n°5 BWV 816 3’14
Jean-Sébastien Bach (1685 - 1750)

8. Danse de Travers n°1 - En y regardant à deux fois 1’41
Erik Satie (1866 - 1925)

9. Tarentelle Styrienne L. 69 5 ‘14
Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918)

10. Danse roumaine n°1 op.8a 4’56
Béla Bartok (1881 - 1945)

11. Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor - I. Andantino 2’47
12. Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor - II. Allegro vivo 1’11
13. Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor - III. Allegro 2’05
14. Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor - IV. Presto 1’01
15. Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor - V. Moderato alla breve 1’31
16. Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor - VI. Presto 2’31
Alexandre Borodine (1833 -1887)

17. Danse de Travers n°2 – Passer 1’26
Erik Satie (1866 - 1925)

18. Danse rituelle du feu de l’Amour Sorcier 3’49
Manuel De Falla (1876 - 1946)

19. Narnchygäer (création) 8’21
François Tashdjian (1974)

20. Danse de Travers n°3 – Encore 2’12
Erik Satie (1866 - 1925)