Recording Language

Accession No.

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Format

Conditions Governing Access

Conditions Governing Reproduction

Synopsis :

A woman who longs for the moon as she would love: light in darkness and eternal. A woman who thinks about the moon as she would count the months: a cycle of fertility, the waiting of birth. A woman reminiscing the moon: the obsession of flight, a desire to be free.

Rather, instead of a story that has a plot with a beginning and an ending, this work is a collection of scenes: a collection of images born out of personal experience, observation, concern and research; a series of sketches about love and sadness, about helplessness and hope.

There is no specific narrative within each scene. The individual episodes convey certain emotions, moods and ideas. The shift from one episode to another are sometimes indicated visually: four woman in black veils suddenly break into a scene; a man crawls down a flight of stairs, couples dancing in joy; a circle is formed. Or sometimes, the change is indicated through the music: a new harmonic texture, a new melody or a human voice.

Certain motifs recur throughout the work. An oval object: some may wish to see it as an egg, as a symbol of fertility, as a symbol of the essence of womanhood. A purple cloth: the colour of tragedy or something else more personal? A boat: symbols of love or of the pain that their thorns bring? A woman bares her body, enslavement and exploitation or an expression of freedom, a defiance of tradition?

For this performance, more than 20 different musical instruments from different traditions are used in the music. The instruments range from synthesizers to Chinese gong and drums to the didgeridoo (Australian aboriginal wind instrument) through the seruling (a Southeast Asian wind instrument) to the gayageum (traditional Korean 12-string zither) and Javanese gongs.