Light Music

Pushing back the frontier between movements that produce sound and the movements of dance, Light Music transfigures those of a performer confronting his audience alone.

with Jean Geoffroy, conductor/soloist

“To play Light Music is to rediscover oneself, to relearn simple movements in all their power and, above all, their fragility.Hand gestures, body movements, a line or a curve can say it all.A rustle, a breath, and everything falls into place; beating of the torn heart.”Threads drawn out” into “infinities”, from “chaos” to the “dancing stars” as they rise, a single possible end: “Silence must be”. Like an echo of our anxieties, our doubts…”

Jean Geoffroy

Pushing back the frontier between movements that produce sound and the movements of dance, Light Music transfigures those of a performer confronting his audience alone. The piece makes play with the poetic duality of movement: permanence of hands given form by light ; remanence of imprints – ephemeral, ethereal, sensual, sharp, percussive – projected on the screen. Movement and music correlate, collide, generate and suspend reciprocally, bearing us away towards chaos, and of course towards the silence, that must be.

Through his diffusion on stage, Light Music is continually improving in order to free the performer from the constraints of the seizing of movements. In this way, he acquires a better autonomy of interpretation and a maximum of responsability in the management of audio and musical triggers. The audio samples have also been record again with the percussionist Jean Geoffroy on the basis of acoustic textures.

Thierry de Mey, conception and composition
Jean Geoffroy, performer, conductor/soloist
Christophe Lebreton, conception of the interactive systems (Grame)
–
Production Grame, national center for musical creation in Lyon 
Coproduction Charleroi Danses, Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles
Collaboration Gmem, national center for musical creation in Marseille
–
Gmem-French Cultural Ministry commission
First performance Musiques en Scène Biennale, Lyon, March 2004