Unusual cross-art performance to make Asian debut in Shanghai

A quirky cross-art performance featuring musicians performing on stage while dancing with professional dancers is set to wow Shanghai on October 27-28.

Musicians from the Scottish Ensemble will dance with professional dancers from Andersson Dance for the concert “Goldberg Variation – Ternary Patterns for Insomnia,” which will make its Asian premiere as part of the 19th Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Rather than simply having the dancers dance along with the music played by musicians, the 11 musicians and five dancers will move together on stage as equal partners. 

The adaptation of “Goldberg Variation” by violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky was chosen as the music.

“‘Goldberg Variation’ is such a brilliant and delicate work that has been done so many times — it interested me to look at it in a new way,” said Andersson, artistic director of Andersson Dance. 

The five dancers and 11 musicians on stage are actually one group rather than two, so he prefers to address them as “16 dancers/musicians.”

“Everybody is moving, and everybody is sort of playing, either playing the music instrument or playing with their own movements,” said Andersson.

“Andersson is not trying to turn us into dancers, because we are not dancers,” said Jonathan Morton, artistic director of Scottish Ensemble. “But the boundary between dancers and musicians does blur on stage in this particular case. We musicians who are not trained turn up contributing to the movement and the special organization of the choreography.”

In a similar way that he works with dancers, Andersson tried to find the key to helping the musicians move.

“Musicians work with sounds,” he explained. “I asked them to make sounds by patting on their arms ... They are making sound and meanwhile also making a movement, so, if we start there, we can start to create a choreography.”

Performance details

Date: October 27-28, 7:30pm

Venue: Cadillac Shanghai Concert Hall

Address: 523 Yan’an Rd E.

Tickets: 80-680 yuan

Tel: 400-891-8182