DESCRIPTION:
Music for Witch Dance (1983): Chester Biscardi

Dancer and Choreographer: LeAnn Yannelli

Percussionists: I-Jen Fang and Elayne Harris

FOLK/ART: a program of works by Beethoven, Berio, Biscardi, Grieg, Lou Harrison, Haydn and Piazzola.

Staunton Music Festival
August 23, 2012
Trinity Episcopal Church
Staunton, Virginia


Music for Witch Dance, for two percussionists (1983), was written for Annabelle Gamson's reconstruction of Mary Wigman's Heksedans (1926) based on fragments of the dance recorded in a 1929 film about Mary Wigman and a description of her work in Rudolph Bach's Das Mary Wigman Büch. The music takes its initial ideas from Willi Goetze's score of 1926 (also in the film and book), originally consisting of three gongs, drum and cymbal, which stylistically reflects the primitive, childlike nature and austerity of the Expressionist period.

(Uploaded with permission from the composer and choreographer.)

www.chesterbiscardi.com