2023 Tandava Simon Thacker theSpaceUK 20th August Review
Tandava at theSpaceUK @ Niddry Street (18 to 26 Aug) features the UK premiere of this work from Ivor Novello award nominated composer and musician Simon Thacker.
Working with three talented dancers from India’s Piah Dance Company, Simon Thacker has composed this music, played by him on guitar tonight. This is a multi-layered, multi-cultural work that takes as its source material from epic stories of the Gods of India, sacred places, core-belief concepts in Hinduism and Buddhism, Indian classical music and European music and the rhythms of dance. The choreography of the dance by Piah Dance Company is a reflection in movement which not only illustrates the four story lines and concepts of Tandava, but gives them that same timeless feeling that you get from Simon’s music.
Piah Dance Company (Bangalore, India) - Priya Varunesh Kumar, Meghana Balaji, and Sangeetha Jayaram have skilfully given us choreography firmly rooted in Indian Classical dance but also incorporated many other elements into their work. In Simon’s music and their dance there are many constantly flowing elements often on a circular exploration, sometimes on a linear one, and some people will recognise elements of Flamenco in here too. Like the never-ending movement of the circles of life and time, people move endlessly too and with them they take their cultures, their music and their dance. Nothing in this world is created without what has come before influencing it in some way and this never-ending flow of rhythms, language and cultures is all here in the music and dance of Tandava.
The Sanskrit word Tandava is everything in this work as it represents not only the cosmic dance of Shiva within a circle of fire, the God of time, but also the concept that everything is circular, eventually the beginning becomes the end, the end becomes the beginning, and future and past are nothing more than ever changing moments within the never ending circle of creation. Here death and re-birth of all that lives is the one universal constant.
There are so many layers that you can approach Tandava from and if you want to take it at its most visible level of a very gifted composer and guitar player and his music playing whilst three talented dancers interpret all of this in the choreography of dance then that is fine. As so often in his work though, Simon has created much more than this and you can, almost in a meditative pattern of thought, start to let yourself flow deeper and deeper into the at times almost hypnotic rhythms that are always somewhere in this work.
Here that pulse of life, that never-ending circle of energy is sound, music itself. This is important because many ancient cultures believe in the power of sound and numbers. Pythagoras believed that music and mathematics were essentially one, and anyone who studies musical theory at even a most basic level will know that this is true.
That never-ending circle of beginning and end will of course be recognised by many musicians in the circles of fourths and fifths too. More than that, creation itself might actually work on this concept as even the new leaves of plants are fractal geometric miniatures of the older ones. That never-ending circle of creation does by default not only create, but requires opposites to remain in harmony, and Simon Thacker explores this musically in one of these four works by looking at the way that major and minor chords can together explore the creative space that their opposing emotional responses can create within us all.
Here though, sound is more than that, vibration is like the different vibrations of the guitar strings on Simon’s guitar, (which at the right length and frequency give him the notes that he requires to make this music) considered by many ancient cultures to be the building blocks of all creation and even possibly a window, even a doorway to higher planes of existence and reality.
If you hold this belief, then Simon Thacker is with his music for Tandava working with the very building blocks of creation whilst the dancers give us their response in movement to these ancient stories of the Gods.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Working with three talented dancers from India’s Piah Dance Company, Simon Thacker has composed this music, played by him on guitar tonight. This is a multi-layered, multi-cultural work that takes as its source material from epic stories of the Gods of India, sacred places, core-belief concepts in Hinduism and Buddhism, Indian classical music and European music and the rhythms of dance. The choreography of the dance by Piah Dance Company is a reflection in movement which not only illustrates the four story lines and concepts of Tandava, but gives them that same timeless feeling that you get from Simon’s music.
Piah Dance Company (Bangalore, India) - Priya Varunesh Kumar, Meghana Balaji, and Sangeetha Jayaram have skilfully given us choreography firmly rooted in Indian Classical dance but also incorporated many other elements into their work. In Simon’s music and their dance there are many constantly flowing elements often on a circular exploration, sometimes on a linear one, and some people will recognise elements of Flamenco in here too. Like the never-ending movement of the circles of life and time, people move endlessly too and with them they take their cultures, their music and their dance. Nothing in this world is created without what has come before influencing it in some way and this never-ending flow of rhythms, language and cultures is all here in the music and dance of Tandava.
The Sanskrit word Tandava is everything in this work as it represents not only the cosmic dance of Shiva within a circle of fire, the God of time, but also the concept that everything is circular, eventually the beginning becomes the end, the end becomes the beginning, and future and past are nothing more than ever changing moments within the never ending circle of creation. Here death and re-birth of all that lives is the one universal constant.
There are so many layers that you can approach Tandava from and if you want to take it at its most visible level of a very gifted composer and guitar player and his music playing whilst three talented dancers interpret all of this in the choreography of dance then that is fine. As so often in his work though, Simon has created much more than this and you can, almost in a meditative pattern of thought, start to let yourself flow deeper and deeper into the at times almost hypnotic rhythms that are always somewhere in this work.
Here that pulse of life, that never-ending circle of energy is sound, music itself. This is important because many ancient cultures believe in the power of sound and numbers. Pythagoras believed that music and mathematics were essentially one, and anyone who studies musical theory at even a most basic level will know that this is true.
That never-ending circle of beginning and end will of course be recognised by many musicians in the circles of fourths and fifths too. More than that, creation itself might actually work on this concept as even the new leaves of plants are fractal geometric miniatures of the older ones. That never-ending circle of creation does by default not only create, but requires opposites to remain in harmony, and Simon Thacker explores this musically in one of these four works by looking at the way that major and minor chords can together explore the creative space that their opposing emotional responses can create within us all.
Here though, sound is more than that, vibration is like the different vibrations of the guitar strings on Simon’s guitar, (which at the right length and frequency give him the notes that he requires to make this music) considered by many ancient cultures to be the building blocks of all creation and even possibly a window, even a doorway to higher planes of existence and reality.
If you hold this belief, then Simon Thacker is with his music for Tandava working with the very building blocks of creation whilst the dancers give us their response in movement to these ancient stories of the Gods.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com