Fighting fire with fire

COMPOSER Bryce Dessner

WORK Impermanence

ARTISTS Australian String Quartet, Sydney Dance Company

DATE 16 February

PLACE Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, Australia bit.ly/3oR7ZPN

Bryce Dessner

Australian String Quartet

DESSNER PHOTO SHERVIN LAINEZ. POWER PHOTO CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

The music for composer Bryce Dessner’s collaboration with the Australian String Quartet (ASQ) and the Sydney Dance Company (SDC) was inspired by the 2019 blaze at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. ‘And after that,’ says ASQ first violinist Dale Barltrop, ‘came the fierce bush fires that spread across Australia. The piece is a statement of our time that Bryce wrote to reflect the importance of life and the things we all take for granted.’ Titled Impermanence, it is a joint commission by the ASQ and SDC, and choreographed by SDC artistic director Rafael Bonachela. Dessner has also written music for groups including Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Kronos Quartet. ‘It’s very intense,’ Barltrop explains. ‘There are lots of alarming moments intercut with others that capture the vulnerability of human life and the fragility of everything around us. It’s a kind of post-minimalist music, full of angst and rhythmic energy.’ Measures to contain the spread of Covid-19 in Australia prevented the work’s premiere from going ahead last year as planned, though a tour is now scheduled for cities across the country. Rehearsals had already reached an advanced stage when the lockdown began, says Barltrop. ‘Luckily, we’d already made a recording of our part to help the dancers learn the piece – the same recording that will be used to take the show to places we aren’t all able to get to.’

‘We can’t live in the moment the same way we would in a normal performance,’ Barltrop adds. ‘The dancers need us to be absolutely where they expect us to be in the score, and Bryce has also written an electronic component that has to line up exactly with what’s happening on stage. It’s so rewarding, though, not to be working only on our own product. It’s the kind of thing all arts organisations should be doing.’