Output details

"Maxamorphosis, for viola, dancers and chamber orchestra" (commissioned by the Aurora Orchestra)

"Maxamorphosis" investigated the porous boundaries separating music and dance, but also their physical manifestations: playing and dancing; musician and dancer. Was it possible to create a single artwork that respected the different aesthetics of communication, but saw them both on a single continuum of conceptual and physical expression? In other words, what would a metamorphosis between music and dance look and feel like?

The research context was the Aurora Orchestra’s New Moves series, intended to experiment with different formats for the performance of concert music. At the project’s centre was the violist, Maximilian Baillie, unusual for his executant expertise in both contemporary dance and music.

The researcher/composer worked with the choreographer Marso Mikael Riviere and dancers from his company, Decalage. This research process explored how the violist might transmute into a dancer, what that might mean poetically, aesthetically and conceptually. It also tackled the more practical performance challenges of how the skins of the musician might be sloughed off to reveal the dancer within.

At the end of the research process a number of metaphors were in the air – perhaps not surprising given the unusual nature of the research and the resulting lack of a word that defined what was actually going on – but metamorphosis was the most telling, itself then transformed into the work’s semi-eponymous title.

"Maxamorphosis", for viola, dancers and chamber orchestra was commissioned by the Aurora Orchestra with support from the RPS Drummond Fund and the PRS Foundation. It was premiered at the 2012 Deal Festival, with subsequent performances at LSO St Luke’s in London, and at Canary Wharf (City of London Festival, July 2012). It is published by Peters Edition, London.