Huihui Cheng: Imaginary strings

Imaginary strings is a piece for choreographed musicians: seven winds and three strings travel according to specific trajectories, with percussive instruments playing all around them. This conception guides both the compositional material and the evolution of instrumental groups, conveying an impression of perpetually moving sound, like waves tracing lines, dancing in circles, or colliding towards each other. The audience perceives those inflections both with the eye and the ear, as if invisible vibrating strings were curving their free fall.

 

»At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.«

(T.S. Elliot, Four Quartets)