Here's EUGENE ORMANY CONDUCTING ... just listen, feel how it rises and flows.
AS YOU LISTEN you con't eee leaps, and pirouettes. You'll just see dancer Emily visiting the room, relatng to each object, relating the chair with curiosity and tenderness recalling how it was used. When I'm dancing to this music, you don't see typical dance steps such as leaps, pirouettes, and intricate footwork. Instead, dancer Emily visits the room and discovers each object, relating to each with curiosity and tenderness, recalling how it was used.
The sound equipment, designed by Bela Bartok's son, Peter, is powerful professional equipment which we've used in Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters.
"We use the space for staging shows, play readings, and raising funds to produce our theater projects. Over the years, a lot of very well-known people have been here for previews.
The floor space is 40 x 25. Our lighting equipment is homemade--we scrounged large tomato cans from neighborhood restaurants, converted them, and made tinfoil frames to hold the gels for each light. Our homemade dimmer board sits in the dressing rooms that are next to our two offices. Above my office is storage space for the costumes and props I used when I performed as soloist with symphony orchestras, and toured the world with my dance company.
In the center of the floor are the chairs and barre I use every day, not just when I listen to this fantastic piece of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. He named it "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis." Just about every day I perform a four-minute section of this music. You'll hear how the music recapitulates its various themes. Of course, the ending is always the same. Standing tall on the double set of chairs, dancer Emily surveys the room. Then, swiftly, recapitulating the memories, triumphantly, I leave the room.
Dancing has been the major part of my life since I was ten-years-old. I dance like people who go to church--I just go into my studio, warm up at the barre, turn on the sound.
As you listen, again, perhaps you'll understand how the music inspires me. Listen again, and LET YOURSELF FEEL the way it it rises and flows. As you hear the music, stand tall. Raise your arm, left arm or right. Now, salute the room. Salute Ormandy himself. And you are dancing. Yes, dancing to this music. YOU CAN DANCE TO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU DO THIS, YOU ARE INSPIRED, thrilled, touched, intrigued and yes, oh my, ready willing and able to keep on dancing. dancing, dancing.
I got one word left to say.
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