FILM
Status Quo: Dance (for Full Orchestra)
Status Quo: Dance (for Full Orchestra)
2019
HD video 13 mins color/sound.
—Starting point gradually increasing speed and dynamics --- Gradually decreasing speed and dynamics back to starting point ---
—Starting point gradually increasing speed and dynamics --- Gradually decreasing speed and dynamics back to starting point ---
In 1938, the Leipzig-born and NY-based ultra-modernist composer Johanna M. Beyer (1888—1944) composed two fragments of music intended as part of her visionary unrealized political opera Status Quo—the prelude Music of the Spheres and the final movement Dance (for Full Orchestra).
The piece was produced during the Nordic Leipzig residency at LIA: Leipzig International Art Programme, in collaboration with Goethe Institut, Iaspis, and Oper Leipzig. Other projects in The Johanna Series include The Spheres (2015), Status Quo: ACT I—IV and Clusters (2019).