Title: Violindance

Premiere: June 7, 1978, Earl Hall Auditorium, Columbia University, NY, NY

Dancer: Jessica Fogel

Duration:  6 minutes.

Music:  Violin theme by Jessica Fogel. Piano music by Natalie Gilbert.

Description: This work was a collaboration with pianist/composer Natalie Gilbert.  I had known Natalie as a wonderful pianist for our dance classes at Barnard College.  I asked her if she would compose a piece of music based upon a theme I had been playing on my violin.  We worked together to find the structure of the work.  I believe I began playing the theme alone, seated on a cube upstage center.  At one point I placed the violin on the floor in front of me and bowed it from a seated position, plunging the bow repeatedly against an open A string. Once I left the cube and the violin, I sometimes mirrored its shape, lying on my side and curving my wrist into a scroll.   I do not have a video of this work.  I think I may have only performed it in June 1978 at Earl Hall.  I made the work soon after completing Twofold, and was grateful to lean into a work that was based solely on sound and movement, without an overt narrative.

Fogel journal choreography notes

More choreography notes, Fogel

Natalie Gilbert score and violin theme

Fogel notes on Violindance for a high school lecture demonstration 1978

Dance Magazine review, by Linda Small