A tune a day

As part of the preparation for our next performance at the end of November and as a way of comprehending the scope of Metamorphoses I am attempting to write themes for characters from the work in relation to the narratives that Ovid recounts.

My approach is to write one short theme every day finishing it the same day – whether perfected or not (usually the latter). The response has to be immediate and intuitive – similar to the approach within unplanned performance such as the exercises we have undertaken where a character, an emotion, and an action are specified to elicit a response from dancer and musician. However, in this case I am trying to find something essential about the character (divine or mortal) within a given story.

I hope to build a repository of motifs that can be memorised and used in performance. I have found that some themes morph into representations of other characters or emotional states – but the process is useful as a continual clarification of what can (and can’t) be signified by a theme.

Here are some examples.

Mercury dresses up:
 

Narcissus sees himself:
 

Adonis:
 

Jupiter:
 

Arachne:
 


Malcolm Atkins