Contemporary choreographers love minimalist music. Its rhythmic repetition, unceasing momentum and layering of phrases provides a useful framework for movement, as in Lucinda Childs’ Dance set to Philip Glass and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Fase, to Steve Reich. Now German choreographer Sasha Waltz tackles Terry Riley’s seminal 1964 piece In C.
Riley had an interest in psychedelia and altering consciousness (it was the 60s after all) and this is music that can lead you to zone in or zone out, lose track of time or be vividly aware of every quaver. It’s built on 53 cells, like riffs, repeated as many times as the players choose, on any combination of instruments. Here they are played admirably by the London Sinfonietta as part of the Southbank’s cross-disciplinary Multitudes festival.
