Performance

Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargio, Rewriting and Both Sitting Duet

Friday 16 Sep 2022 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm

Saturday 17 Sep 2022 from 8pm to 9pm

8 € (reduced) - 12 €

© Marc Domage

For the festival Echelle Humaine, the two artists will show their ever first duet Both Sitting Duet (2002) and one of their newest duets Rewriting (2001).

Choreographer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion have collaborated for over 30 years, and their ongoing body of duets continue to tour widely. The work is hard to place, combining intellectual rigour with unexpected humour, but it has its roots in a shared love of classical music, which they clash against an approach to performance that is at once open to audience but also anarchic and joyful.

Both Sitting Duet is a translation into gesture of the violin and piano piece For John Cage by Morton Feldman, which has been presented over 400 times around the world. Rewriting is a complex rhythmic table dance of 108 cards, each of which carries a written thought that fuels a simultaneous spoken stream of consciousness, all of it set to music for Casio keyboard.

Conception and interpretation: Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion are supported by PACT Zollverein Essen and Sadler's Wells Theatre London.
© Marc Domage
© Marc Domage
© Marc Domage

Choreographer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion have been collaborators for over thrity years, the past two decades of which they've built a body of duets which straddle the line between dance, music, performance art and comedy.

The work has drawn a loyal international following for its integrity, openness and independent stance. Watching a Burrows and Fargion performance has been described as like being invited into their living room, and this conversation with audience is central to their performance practice, equal together under the same roof. Both artists studied classical music composition with composer Kevin Volans, which knowledge and experience informs their frequent use of written score, as a way to work with duration and as a distancing mechanism from more conventional notions of performance. They describe all their work as music, and are often engaged in acts of translation where what was heard is now seen, or what was seen becomes spoken language. Their performance practice extends also to collaborative workshops with other artists, students, writers and curators from dance and related mediums. Burrows also wrote the widely used A Choreographer's Handbook, drawn from his experience of leading five years of conversational workshops. They perform regularly around the world, presenting different works in different combinations, frequently for non-theatre spaces. Their philosophy is that all work is new at the point of performance, and they often don't announce new pieces, integrating the new into the body of work without further comment.