| Deflecting
Faith (2004) spatialized stereophonic tape for dance
Music and diffusion: Peter V. Swendsen
First performed at ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA, June 2004 Deflecting Faith addresses the obstacles that arise when one chooses to deflect inferences of faith. What supplants faith in god or religion when an individual consciously chooses not to challenge the difficult questions of life, such as hope, death, duty and fate? What happens to a life in which doubt prevails? What makes faith real and not just hope? This evening-length piece is my fifth collaboration with choreographer Mary Carbonara. The score makes extensive use of samples from religious settings and documents. Church hymns and spoken sermons are featured prominently, sometimes supported and extended, but often deconstructed and heavily manipulated to create a sound score that ranges from peaceful to harsh. The piece is made for stereophonic tape, but is intended for a playback situation that allows live diffusion of the sound to speakers close to the audience, speakers far from the audience but still in the performance space, and speakers outside of the performance space but still audible to the audience. |
© 2004
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