Stravinski

In 2000, I volunteered at a special project of the Holland Festival, called Zingaro. It's the name of a company that is lead by a little but very scary guy called Bartabas, who made a theatre performance with horses. They were playing in Amsterdam in March, while the festival is in June but the Holland Festival invited them to play at the Westergasfabriek, which was an underdeveloped part of Amsterdam.


The Gashouder, one of the mail locations, was build like a circus, with sand and cuttings on the floor. Outside they constructed the stables for the horses, the dancers would do their warming up around them. When Bartabas was walking around, as one of the volunteers, you tried to make yourself invisible, so he wouldn't see you and therefor couldn't yell at you. I vaguely remember being in his way by accident and being growled at to move out of his way. he really was scary.

When the audience had taken its seat on the wooden benches and the buzzling sounds slowly silenced, you could softly hear the beginning of the bassoon. A small spotlight appeared int the middle of the arena. A dancer moved. Other instruments were added to the bassoon. More dancers appeared out of the darkness. The music got louder and the dancers left their traces in the sand. And then, when the strings were plucking, suddenly, there were the horses with their amazons. The dancers seemed to defend themselves against the horses that surrounded them. The choreographies mixed. Then, the horses took over the dance.
Everyone who knows Le Sacre du Printemps by Stravinsky, knows about the intensity of the piece, let alone when it's combined with a dance between men and horses.


Several week later, by a twist of fate, I received two tickets to a performance of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, who played the same piece of Stravinsky, cunducted by no other than Piere Boulez. When the bassoon started, I smelled the sand and the horses and with every part, in my mind I saw the dance between men and horses.

In the Zingaro performance, after Le Sacre, they performed the Symphony of Psalms, also by Stravinsky. I'm always remembered of the atonal sounds of that piece when I'm rehearsing with my choir, where we are momentarily rehearsing his Mass. you have to like modern classical music, but if you do, it can move you to tears. Even while rehearsing it over and over again. And once in a while, in that airless rehearsal room, I can smell the scent of sand and cuttings, and hear the sounds of the horses from a disctance.