The French composer demanded of his music to stimulate the fantasy of the audiance intrinsically and create a world of inner pictures beyond common aspects of imagination. Debussy’s piano music was not only able to evoke new poetic atmospheres with the audience, but also drew  strong associations to other sources through his compositional intentions. The inspiring relationship within the arts such as painting, dance, poetry and certainly music, built a climate in which the composer set up his artistic universe.

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes” (Claude Debussy)

The unswerving search for a unique relationship between dance, sound and visual space is the backbone of the artistic approach of TAW in the solo-duo-trio formation of ‘Prélude Walk In’, thus examining sound to image and image to sound transformations.

Selected piano pieces by Claude Debussy (24 Préludes 2^nd Book) and related orchestrated materials, gathered and interpreted by the pianist Cecilia Li, serve as anchor for the choreographic structure. In homage to Debussy’s affinity to Asian traditions, Sebastian Prantl and his co-dancers combine and inform this topic with a contemporary reading.

In the aftermath of the Paris World Fair in 1889, the composer had access to the musical structure of Javanese Gamelan music, which is the traditional musical accompaniment for shadow dance theatre. Following along this line, Prantl and his co-dancers play off the transformation of characters. Through surreal shifts in costumes & mask changes and the suspensions of gender roles occur, creating new relationships between the character developing a changing plot.

Piano Solo: Cecilia Li

Spatial Concept/Dance: Sebastian Prantl

Co-dancer: Alexsandro Araujo Guerra, Ku Ming-Shen

Lighting Design: Boon Ann Goh

Visual design: Jim Shum

Premiered at TAW in cooperation with ImPulsTanz, September 2012; Brasilia Opera House, 2013; Kuandu Arts Festival, Taipei, 2013