August 30, 31, and September 2 — Dance and video inspired by Steve Reich’s “Different Trains”
One of the most beautiful works of minimalist composition is Steve Reich’s “Different Trains,” connecting train travel in an earlier America with the trains that transported Jews and others across Europe during the Holocaust. Expect to be moved by Susurrus’s production at IndyFringe.
When: Thursday August 30 at 7:30 PM; Friday August 31 at 7:30 PM; Sunday September 2 at 5:30 PM
Where: Auditorium at the Athenaeum, 401 East Michigan Street Indianapolis
Susurrus will present an interaction of dance and video projection choreographed by Melli Hoppe with video by David Yosha set to Steve Reich’s musical composition Different Trains. Different Trains is a movement collage based on the history and memories of train travel including the trips taken by refuges fleeing European cities during WWII.
The good people at Wikipedia have this to say about Reich’s composition:
In Different Trains, after each melody in the piece is introduced, usually by a single instrument, a recording of the spoken phrase from which the melody derives is played. The melody is then developed for a while, with the instruments playing along with the recording of the phrase or part of the phrase. In addition to speech, the piece calls for recordings of train sirens. Much of the recorded speech that forms the basis for Different Trains is among the first recordings made on magnetic tape. It is taken from interviews with people in the United States and Europe about the years leading up to, during, and immediately after World War II. In the first movement, America — Before the War, Americans speak about train travel in the US. American train sirens are heard in the background. In the second movement, Europe — During the War, Europeans, many Holocaust survivors, speak about the conditions in Europe during the war, in particular how trains were used to transport millions of civilians to concentration camps, and the sirens used are European train sirens. The third movement, America — After the War, features people talking about the years immediately following World War II, and a return to the American train sirens from the first movement. During the war years, Reich made train journeys between New York and Los Angeles to visit his parents, who had separated. Years later, he pondered the fact that, as a Jew, had he been in Europe instead of the United States at that time, he might have been travelling in very different trains.
