American minimalist composer Terry Riley will celebrate his 90th birthday in June. A number of tribute events have already taken place, with more scheduled throughout the year. So far, what I saw on Tuesday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall was the most compelling act of homage. The German dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests, who developed this production in 2021 and have since performed it over 75 times in 10 countries, joined forces with the London Sinfonietta for the “cross-disciplinary UK premiere” of Riley’s seminal In C.
The show began with dancers flitting across the stage, no musicians in sight. As the backlight gradually came on, it shifted from one colour of the rainbow to the next, subtly creating changes in mood – an astute detail in Riley’s symbolic universe, no doubt. Each dancer wore a distinct, vibrant hue, contributing to the carefree buzz of it all.
When Riley wrote In C in 1964, he had no idea it would spark a musical revolution, bringing repetition to the forefront of American experimental music and, eventually, to the mass market. In many ways, the active use of repetition has come to define what commercially successful classical music is over the past 50 years. Composed of 53 short fragments, In C allowed musicians to move through the score at will. As such, the work is often described as a form of guided improvisation.
The standout of the performance was the subtle parallel between the dance and the music – not something you could see directly, but something you could definitely feel, as both progressed through their own set of 53 patterns. The dancers didn’t try to map their routine onto the music, though they followed its pulse. Instead, they created something entirely their own, which worked precisely because of the nature of the score, allowing random textural combinations to emerge.