Walk the Walk

FOR FOUR PERFORMERS, TREADMILLS, OBJECTS, LIGHT AND SMOKE (2020)

BY Simon Steen-Andersen

The starting point of the production by the Danish composer and media artist Simon Steen-Andersen is the act of walking. It’s one of the easiest actions to perform on stage. But it is also a truly musical element, inextricably linked to the concepts of pulse, speed, rhythm, direction, synchronicity and kinetic energy.

»Walking is a means of locomotion for organic creatures that have arbitrary movement and feet,« is one definition, given by the Brockhaus Encyclopedia of 1837. It was later, through the invention of photography and film, that scientists were able to visualise and understand the complexity of movements of walking and the balancing act it requires. Inspired by experimental arrangements and documentaries by early movement researchers, Simon Steen-Andersen sets out – in collaboration with the Swiss percussion quartet, Ensemble This | Ensemble That – to deconstruct walking in terms of theatrical and musical material in a skilful interplay of causality and stage mechanics.

Media

A production and commissioned composition by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Musica Strasbourg, Gare du Nord Basel and KLANG Copenhagen