When: Saturday, April 28 at 8pm

Where: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Melton Rehearsal Hall, 641 D Street NW, Washington DC.

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Nancy Havlik Dance Performance Group premieres

John Cage Anniversary Tribute Silence Is As Varied As Snow

 

Nancy Havlik Dance Performance Group celebrates John Cage’s birthday centenary, with a new dance/theater work, which explores the nature of silence and sound.

 

Silence Is As Varied As Snow premieres on Saturday, April 28 at 8pm at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s Melton Rehearsal Hall, Washington, DC. 

 

Silence Is As Varied As Snow is a new narrative dance performance work for 7 dancers & two musicians. The piece was inspired by and devised as a response to John Cage’s fascination with silence.

 

Featuring dance, live music, song and story, Silence Is As Varied As Snow began as an improvisation in which the dancers moved within the dynamics inherent in silence.  Company founder Nancy Havlik explains: “Silence as latent sound was the frame within which the composition grew, and the sounds it features are as varied as the silences. We explored a perceived silence, in which we listened to the sounds in the room, outside, air conditioners, people talking on the floor below us, our own breath, our heart beat. We then explored how we could increase that spectrum of sound. Adding musicians, we developed dance to these various types of sound/silence scores. The dancers moved in response to the music of the double bass (Daniel Barbiero) and key board (Nguyen Khoi Nguyen)  In turn the musicians played in response to the dancers' moves..” Company musician Daniel Barbiero says: “Cage helped us to understand that silence is only sounds we aren’t at the moment paying attention to.”