Chen Yi - Chinese Ancient Dances

Aiwen Zhang - Saxophone
Jingjing Wan - Piano

Directed and Edited by V&A TV

Program notes:
Co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Virginia Arts Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, and Chamber Music Northwest, the duo Chinese Ancient Dances was written for and dedicated to David Shifrin and André-Michel Schub for their national tour and their Alice Tully Hall premiere on May 7, 2004. The premiere performance was dedicated to celebrating the 70th birthday of Prof. Mario Davidovsky, one of my great professors at Columbia University. The work consists of two movements: I. Ox Tail Dance, and II. Hu Xuan Dance.

It is said that in ancient times, there was an ethnic group called Ge Tian Shi. Three people would dance in slow steps with ox tails in their hands, while singing eight songs to praise the earth, the totem of the black bird, plants, grains, nature, heaven, weather, and the flourishing of breeding livestock. I got my inspiration from imagining the gestures of holding the ox tails and went into the atmosphere of composing the first movement, Ox Tail Dance.

There is a poem called "Hu Xuan Lady" written by the famous poet Bai Ju-Yi in the Tang Dynasty, who described the Hu Xuan dance in detail. The energetic dance has continuous fast, spinning gestures, introduced to China from the West in ancient times. I reproduced this image in the second movement of my music, written vividly for clarinet and piano.