OTTETTO (8 Swings for His Highness)

OTTETTO's "Dance Concerto" (8 oscillations for His Highness) is based on Igor Stravinsky's Octet, a 16-minute treat from 1923, a purely structural composition without any narrative meaning, which the composer himself called "cold, transparent and spicy like extremely dry champagne". Iztok Kovac's OTTETTO choreographically disassembles, analyses and then reconstructs and visualises this extraordinary piece of music.

The author examines the Octet from different perspectives and explores the current attitudes of the artists involved towards this musical work. Thus, in the performance we experience the response of the conductor,

8 musicians,

5 dancers and

groups of visual artists.

Alongside the lively collaborative sequences, these different responses represent an extension of the expected performance of the original work, which now has an 8-part structure for 14 performers.

In the Octet, written as a classical sonata cycle for an unusual combination of wind and brass instruments, Stravinsky unexpectedly used the technical tools of Baroque and Classical music. The more modern harmonies and rhythmic complexity thus act as a strange effect in relation to the polyphonic technique and the chosen pre-Romantic form, and herald the beginning of the neoclassical period in the history of music.

The movement of the En Knap Dance Group dancers is characterised by a specific movement vocabulary, derived from the analysis of the score of the individual instruments in the Octet, which both emphasises and subverts the abstract structure of the Octet. The movement is repeatedly subjected to the strict periodic rhythm of the metronome, evoking the presence of the master. In OTTETTO, the Octet can metaphorically be seen as a musical work written by Igor Stravinsky for the theatre, though of course this was not the case.

Stravinsky's Octet, which in the composer's time was received with widespread disbelief and disapproval and perceived as a bad joke, is performed live in OTTETTO (8 Swings for His Highness) by an ensemble of Slovenian musicians from the Festine ensemble / Cultural Association BSA under the direction of conductor Živa Ploj Peršuh.