Dancing On Schubert

A collaboration by choreographer Trisha Brown and baritone Simon Keenleyside reinterprets Schubert’s classic “Die Winterriese” song cycle. “The real revelation of the Winterreise experiment is the effect it has on Schubert’s music, which is flung into unusual and arresting contexts. Brown had feared that it might enrage musicologists: ‘I worried that it might be irreverent to Schubert. In the rehearsal room, when we first made it, I said to the dancers that I’m thinking of Simon, who is going to lie down now. He’s delusional and dreaming and you put your knees up and your hands up and catch him to stop him from falling off. On one level, it couldn’t be simpler. But on another level it’s so totally absurd and surreal and radical. In fact, the new setting, and the vocal effect it creates, paradoxically manages to serve the score in a way that a conventional performance never could.”