LIMITLESS: PROGRAM NOTES
Missing Piece is a solo chamber work for Flute, Ukulele, Voice and loop pedal, meditating on my childhood as the only child in my family, the only child on my street and responding to the solitary confinement cell in the Lockup. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. As a child, I spent my 10,000 hours alone, becoming an expert in navigating the silent solitude of life without children. For as long as I can remember, those around me sense an aura of "only", which is to be avoided like a contagion. Although I feel like a whole person, I carry the burden of a missing piece that's shaped by the absence of others where others should be. - Jennifer Hankin, Composer
Fire is about duality. It is a symbol of anger. An emotion sometimes judged as offensive, fearful, loud or harmful. When anger is embraced it is connecting, strong, empowering and grounding. The symbol of fire connects fear with awe. We are captivated by the dancing warming light and simultaneously afraid of the powerful heat that burns. Fire is the exchange between destruction and beauty. Tension and release. Anger and love. When we welcome these human experiences as one and the same, we can let go of suffering and ease into authenticity. The friction that makes the first spark erupts into a dancing whimsical flame. - Sarah Monk, Composer
Cadavre Exquis is a surrealist game thought up early in the 1920's in Paris by surrealists Yves Tanguy Jacques Prévert, Andre Benton and Marcel Duchamp. A game of folded paper, where a group collectively creates a drawing without seeing the previous fragment of the drawing. The result being a collective creation that is free of the limitations of reason and aesthetic models. We set out to create 6 fragments, individually and with minimal limitations. Each fragment, similar to a section of a body drawn upon a piece of paper, related to a different perception of time. During this performance the audience will help us create a musical cadavre exquis. One of the limitations we face is not time itself but that our perception of time is constantly shifting. Our lives are a cadavre exquis of altered perceptions of time, shifting our emotional states with them. We often feel at the mercy of time believing our perception of time to be real and total. Surrealism questions the idea of what is real, and the limitations our minds place upon our experience. Are we at the mercy of time or are we being taken upon a delightful journey through it. - Naomi Dart, Composer
Circle/Spiral: Sometimes we feel we are moving in circles, as though caught in a loop. We feel trapped, limited by our own habits, preconceptions and expectations, and those of others. When new pathways emerge before us, we are reminded that our life’s unfolding is more like a great spiral, whose deepest depths and loftiest heights we can scarcely imagine. Despite all that changes, there is something that remains the same, a liquid self that experiences and evolves, the one who chooses how to meet the present moment. Circle / Spiral speaks to life’s turning points, shifting perspectives and deep mystery. - Christopher Sutherland, Composer