Premiere: 22.02.2006
Theaterhaus Gessnerallee Zurich
Reader,
Whether you be Dilettante or Professor, in these Compositions do not expect
any profound Learning, but rather an ingenious Jesting with Art, to accommodate
you to the Mastery of Harpsichord. Neither Considerations of Interest,
nor Visions of Ambition, but only Obedience moved me to publish them!
Perhaps they will be agreeable to you; then all the more gladly will I
obey other Commands to favour you with more simple and varied Style. Therefore
show yourself more human than critical, and then your pleasure will increase.
To designate to you the Position of the Hands, be advised that by D is
indicated the Right, and by M the Left. Live Happily.
With these words, Domenico Scarlatti, in the year 1738 launched thirty harpsichord pieces which were destined to grow into a set of 555 sonatas which would stamp his name indelibly into the annals of history as one of the most strikingly original composers of the 18th century. (R. Kirkpatrick, Princeton University Press, ©1953)
Again and again, people who are searching for happiness and fulfilment,
are highly motivated to overcome the fear of the unknown and they try
to discover and explore new ways. The more one is addicted to this moments
of happiness, more borders one leaves behind oneself, leaving back familiar
ground, the more humans make new discoveries and extend their experiences.
At the same time, more things are made possible.
This happens not only in Arts but also in the Science and all the other
Disciplines.
Staying in the known structure, in its comfortable limits represents the
human need for safety. But to explore the own possibilities, we are exposed
to overcome this known borders.
Heshiki uses this tension between fear and happiness transmitted in a physical way for his new creation "Happy Freaks". He explains in his choreography the beginning of joy (movement), moments in which studied patterns are broken and the cramps growing out of fear will be left behind. Who tries to escape and to free oneself of this physical inhibition, which is always shadowed in distant by death, finds in a new, enlarged point of view moments of new fulfilment. But, they again, endure only as long as the new gained experience does not transform itself into habit.
A musical equivalent for this mechanism of searching Heshiki found in
the Claviersonatas from Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). The immense variety
of hues and variable tempi used in more than 500 pieces convinced Heshiki,
that this great composer never worked along known patterns but trusted
many components of his own awareness to create his oeuvre. The grand variety
of his work shows that Scarlatti has again and again tried to break through
his own awareness habits.
In "Happy Freaks" Heshiki creates to a selection of Scarlattis
Clavier- Sonatas a dynamic structure, in which music, dance, space and
lighting needs one another, reacts together, searches harmony and creates
an integral whole.
Nothing more but dance and music, this shall be the easy yet so grand task! H. Heshiki
Concept, Direction and Dance Hideto Heshiki On Grand-Piano Akiko Okabe Music Domenico Scarlatti, Clavier-Sonaten Light Frank Dardel & Niki Good Stage Frank Dardel & Niki Good Costumes Andrea Freund Production manager Noriaki Ikeda & Niki Good Produced by Hideto Heshiki and Theaterhaus Gessnerallee Supported by Fachstelle Kultur Kanton Zürich, Migros Kulturprozent, Präsidialdepartement der Stadt Zürich, Pro Helvetia Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Fondation Nestlé pour l'Art, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Familien-Vontobel-Stiftung, Kulturstiftung Winterthur, Karl und Sophie Binding Stiftung Thanks to Tanzhaus Zürich, Tina Good, Susana Panadès Diaz, Rudi Van Der Merwe, Serena Schranz, Catherine Flubacher, Raphaël Brand, Yuka Raeuber
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