Choreographer: Jonathan Burrows
Music: Matteo Fargion
Composer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion’s collaborations span three decades. This evening of two of their most recent works shows an easy working relationship, which translates into a joyful experience for the audience.
In 2019’s Rewriting, Burrows sits at a table dealing out index cards, six at a time, from a previous failed project. A series of increasingly elaborate hand gestures are employed – flipping them, flicking them, brandishing them at arm’s length as if by a conjurer setting up a card trick.
Burrows’ narration as he performs all this complex armography is slick and humorous, punctuated by the reading of aphorisms from the cards, each of which miraculously aligns with his commentary. From “The more you learn, the less you seem to understand,” to “Nothing is ever wasted,” there is plenty of useful advice mixed in there too.
Everything is accompanied by Fargion on a miniature Casio keyboard, its tinny less than serious tones complementing Burrows’s tongue-in-cheek delivery. By the time the piece’s half-hour running time is up, we have been told that “works like this endure only for a moment”, and in song we are instructed to “Forget all this”. As with all the best works, neither is true.
The pair’s 2021 work Science Fiction is a very different beast. With Burrows and Fargion each standing behind a synth, the pair take turns to play a simple one-handed melody. What starts as a simple call and response begins to acquire embellishments, from an extra note at the end to accompaniment by a snare drum stick with righteous force. One can imagine the original melodies as carrier waves, upon which the additions become messages exchanged from one civilisation to another.
There is more repetition than progression, though, and even at only half an hour one can feel nudged by the thought that the piece needs something extra. That tension between audience expectation and delivery, though, is one of the lessons from Rewriting, As such, this pair of thoughtful and thought-provoking works complement each other beautifully.
Continues until 6 May 2022
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Thoughtful works
