![]() Then he studied choreography for four years at the prestigious School for Drama “Ernst Busch“ and founded Klangkrieg Productions, a platform for experimental music. In the early 1990’s, he performed in underground techno clubs. After the fall of the wall, he danced in video productions for MTV and worked as a bodyguard and construction worker. He then studied martial arts and breakdance, before being accepted at the National Ballet School in Berlin. His work covers a wide range of formats and deals with topics both of a very personal nature as well as highly political contributions to current social discourse.īorn in Torgau in the former GDR, he was a multiple Spartakiad winner in the disciplines weightlifting and judo as a teenager. The starting point is the hypothetical question: What if Eastman’s music had become part of the musical canon? What inspirations could dance have drawn from his work?Īll pieces are performed live by the renowned Zafraan Ensemble.Ĭhristoph Winkler is one of the most versatile choreographers in Germany. This project attempts to render three of Eastman’s pieces – Gay Guerilla, The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc and Femenine – with international guests into choreography that concentrates on the rhythmic qualities and political objectives of Eastman’s music. Thanks to various reconstructions in recent years, his work has been rediscovered and is finally receiving due international recognition. Most of his compositions were also lost in the process. ![]() In the end, he died lonely and homeless, after a long bout of substance abuse. However, as an openly gay Afro-American in an art form dominated by whites, he never quite managed to really become part of the minimal music community. His compositions were enthusiastically performed and received in the USA and Europe. ![]() Very soon, his talents began to cause a stir and consequently he worked with acclaimed artists such as Morton Feldman, Pierre Boulez, Meredith Monk and Arthur Russel. He began piano lessons as a young child and soon later also started dance training. He was a musician, composer, singer and dancer. Eastman, born 1940 in Ithaca, New York, was one of those multi-talents rarely found in music history. In the process, it brings together more than 20 artists from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. It expands the spectrum of the established canon of minimal art dance pieces inspired by music and adds to it a new, previously little-heard voice. The project takes into special account the broader history of minimal music and contemporary dance. This important volume of essays, brought forth by two brilliant women who have long championed Eastman s music, belongs in every music conservatory library and beyond.The project is a musical-choreographic exploration of the works of Afro-American composer Julius Eastman, who passed away in 1990. Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music has arrived just in time for Black Lives Matter and gets my deepest praise. For those who are interested in iconoclasts of whatever stripe, this volume will be a revelation and an invitation to rethink what composition, performance, and life at the precipice of madness can be. The publication of this rigorously researched, lovingly produced, multidimensional study of a singular artist will surely be met with joy by those of us who remember Julius Eastman the inspired creator, the sly provocateur and martyred saint of the avant-garde. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist that is compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights. In addition to analyses of Eastman's music, the essays in Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era's social landscape. These episodes are examples of Eastman's persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights. Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. Eastman's provocative titles, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigge r, and others, assault us with his obsessions. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |