Both Sitting Duet - One Flute Note
Jonathan Burrows - Matteo Fargion
31/05/2013
, 
20:30
by and with Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion are supported by Kaaitheater Brussels, PACT Zollverein Essen, Sadler's Wells Theatre London and BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen
management Nigel Hinds
Both Sitting Duet has been supported by Kaaitheater Brussels, Dance Umbrella London, NOTT Dance Festival, England, Joint Adventures Munich, The Arts Council of England, PARTS/Rosas, Dance 4, The Laban, Centre London and the Jonathan Burrows Group
One Flute Note was supported by Arts Council England and co-produced by Kaaitheater Brussels
Durata 1h 30'
One Flute Note national premičre
The return of the choreographer Jonathan Burrows and the composer Matteo Fargion, whose artistic work has been for years subject of attention of the Festival. This evening the duo will stage Both Sitting Duet, the first chapter of the trilogy of The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance that VIE’s audience would remind, and their latest work One Flute Notes on national premiere.
In Both Sitting Duet Burrows and Fargion, sit, side by side, on two chairs, and perform with absolute precision and concentration a music composition for the body, reading it from a score. Hands turn and intersect in the space, respecting the rhythm, fingers move tiptoeing on breast. Arms and legs, with their animated dialogue between rhythm, sound and gesture contest the role of the choreographer and the one of the composer, demonstrating their equity. The two men sitting duet stay in silence, playing the same piece by Morton Feldman, For John Cage, but the scores laying on the floor in front of them are different: Fargion’s one is full of music notes, Burrow’s one is full of numbers. The rhythmic counterpoint they perform is the result of their equal participation to the creation of a dance capable to evoke not only the possibilities of body in movement, but also the immense vocabulary of imagination.
Over the past ten years the two artists have built a body of duets which juxtapose the formality of music composition with a radical and open approach to performance and audiences. One Flute Note continue their conversation with the structure of John Cage's Lecture On Nothing, at once a homage to and questioning of a way of thinking that has underpinned so much dance and performance in the last thirty years.
"It is as if Burrows and Fargion have fashioned a way of performing that is a metaphor for living with more freedom within the conflicted confines of our daily lives".
Nicholas Minns, writing about dance.com
"...a challenging meditation on form and memory, but performed with such a droll tension that it's also a deliciously entertaining kind of dance theatre".
Judith Mackrell The Guardian
www.jonathanburrows.info
Jonathan Burrows - Matteo Fargion
Jonathan Burrows
He was born in 1960. He danced with the Royal Ballet for 13 years,
rising to the rank of soloist, before leaving in 1991 to pursue his own choreography.
After touring with his own company for some years he decided in 2001 to concentrate on one to one collaborations with other artists, who would share the conception, making, performing and administrating of the work. His first collaboration was Weak Dance Strong Questions (2001), made with the theatre maker and performer Jan Ritsema, which toured to 14 countries. This was followed by a series of duets with Matteo Fargion, beginning in 2002 with Both Sitting Duet, followed by The Quiet Dance (2005), Speaking Dance (2006). Cheap Lecture (2009) and The Cow Piece (2009). The two men have now given over 200 performances across 28 countries. Both Sitting Duet won a 2004 New York Dance and Performance 'Bessie' Award, and Cheap Lecture was chosen for the 2009 Het
Theaterfestival in Belgium. In 2010 he also made Dogheart, with the dancer Chrysa Parkinson. Other high profile commissions include Sylvie Guillem and William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, and in 2008 he was Associate Director for Peter Handke's The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other at the National Theatre, London. Burrows has been an Associate Artist at Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Gent, Belgium (1992- 2002), London’s South Bank Centre (1998/9) and Kaaitheater Brussels (2008 -). In 2002 he received an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts In New York, in recognition for his ongoing contributions to contemporary dance. He is a visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S, and is also Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University Of London, Hamburg University and the Free University Berlin. He holds an
Honorary Doctorate from Royal Holloway University of London. 'A Choreographer's
Handbook' (2010) by Jonathan Burrows is available from Routledge Publishing.
www.jonathanburrows.info
Matteo Fargion
He was born in Milan 1961. He studied composition with the composers
Kevin Volans and Howard Skempton, and after graduation played bass guitar for a time in the rock band headed by Chris Newman, a formative experience of live performance.
His interest in contemporary dance began after seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London, returning the following evening to give flowers to the dancers. This experience encouraged him to apply for the International Course for Choreographers and Composers, where he first wrote music for dance, and through which he met the choreographer Jonathan Burrows with whom he has collaborated for more than twenty years. Since 2002 Burrows and Fargion have made a series of five duets conceived, choreographed, composed, administrated and
performed together. Both Sitting Duet (2002), The Quiet Dance (2005), Speaking Dance (2006), Cheap Lecture (2009) and The Cow Piece (2009) are still touring, and the two men
have now given over 200 performances across 28 countries. Both Sitting Duet won a 2004 New York Dance and Performance 'Bessie' Award, and Cheap Lecture was chosen for the 2009 Het Theaterfestival in Belgium. Fargion has written music for other choreographers including Lynda Gaudreau and Russell Maliphant. Most importantly over the past fifteen years he has developed a strong collaboration with the leading English choreographer Siobhan Davies, writing music for some of her most significant recent work including The Art of Touch (1995), Two Quartets (2007) and Minutes for the Collection
(2009), in which he also performed. Fargion writes also for theatre, particularly in
Germany, where he has worked over a number of years at the Residenz Theater Munich,
and at the Berlin Schaubühne under the direction of Thomas Ostermeier, for whom he wrote music for the prize winning 2004 production of Jon Fosse's new play The Girl on the Sofa. Matteo is a visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S.
