Choreography: Alison Cook-Beatty Music: Tabula Rasa and Silentium by Arvo Pärt Performance Info: Six dancers; 26 minutes
(May also be performed as a ten minutes excerpt with a cast of two dancers)
Commissioned by Ballet Next
Premiered at The Joyce Theater in New York City
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
— John Donne, 1624
From the Latin tintinnabulum, a bell, Tintinnabuli is a compositional style created by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Musically, Pärt’s tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voices, the “tintinnabular voice” which arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion.
