Wagner & Ligeti is a piece about music and its meaning. It explores how the structures, repetitions, and temporal interplays of orchestral music come to embody and communicate ideas; how the ‘organized noise’ of music evokes images, and turns those images into thought. In turn, we ask how our thought structures our perception of music. How does our own knowledge regarding a piece enrich our experience of it?

The dancers will guide the audience through an exploration of two pieces: Wagner's Tannhauser Overture, one of the clearest pieces of ‘narrative’ instrumental music in the western canon, and György Ligeti’s Lontano, which seeks to undo the very notion of musical hierarchy, presenting a 12-tone orchestral arrangement.

By confronting these seemingly radically different pieces through dance, we may discover how closely they truly resemble and long for each other, and in so doing expose the chimerical processes by which the neutral phenomena ‘sound’ and ‘movement’ become impregnated with meaning, becoming ‘music’ and ‘dance’

A sight, a sound, or a fragrance evokes half-forgotten thoughts of persons, places, and experiences, stirs up dreams "mixing memory with desire", or awakens conscious connotations of referential things. These imaginings, whether conscious or unconscious, are the stimuli to which the affective response is really made. In short, music may give rise to images and trains of thought which, because of their relation to the inner life of the particular individual, may eventually culminate in affect. - Leonard B Meyer

Concept: Albert Quesada Created By and With: Marcus Baldemar, Eleanor Campbell, Federica Porello, Mireia de Querol, Albert Quesada, Zoltán Vakulya Performed By: 5 of the above mentioned dancers Sound Design: Christian Francois Light Design: Bert Van Dijck Music: Richard Wagner’s Tanhäuser and György Ligeti’s Lontano Costumes: Sofie Durnez Illustrations: Gosia Machon Text: extract from rehearsal with György Ligeti Program Text: JS Rafaeli Musical Advise: Jan Vandenhouwe and BL!NDMAN Voice Coach: Gunther Vandeven Choreographic Assistant: Petra Söör Production: Albert Quesada / Klein Verzet vzw Coproduction:  Life Long Burning/workspacebrussels, Charleroi Danses, Kunstencentrum BUDA, PACT Zollverein (Départs) With the support of the Flemish authorities, the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie and the Culture Programme of the European Union In collaboration with: wp Zimmer, TAKT/Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof, STUK, El Graner and Kunstencentrum Monty Diffusion: Curtain Call Productions Touring: Schouwburg Kortrijk, Charleroi Danses, ...