Mathematics of resonant bodies

“The mathematics of resonant bodies”, by John Luther Adams is a 70 minute musical composition in eight movements. Although a series of different sonic rhythms, textures and tones follow one another, the silence the piece was composed in, worms its way through, emerges as sounds and bursts throughout. Mathematics of resonant bodies (Part one) presents the first four sections Burst, Rumble, Shimmer and Roar. The two dancers move through and are passed through a space that encompasses musical patterns of silence, rhythm, darkness and light, like the patterns in life. The constant shift of sonic textures represents the ongoing changes in the tangible world and those that take place in the human being; hence the manner in which individuals interacts with one another.
Dance sequences come to life, both real and unreal dances of emotions and of correlated events. Each passage is only apparently an episode in itself, a short story resonating in various directions and in the bodies of the dancers, like a fleeting birth and a fleeting death. But like the flowing of a stream has no beginning and no end, each passage plays a part in the life cycle and in the unfolding of the story of the universe. Two bodies, two lives, two souls and two hearts interact and resonate in the mathematics of the rhythm of existence, seeking the experience of silence that it derives from.
In Burst everything is a question of intense and subtle moments. Everyday life is interrupted by unplanned but inevitable encounters. For a moment two lives are intertwined and become intimate but separate unpredictably and effortlessly immediately afterwards.
Rumble presents daily solitude, two parallel lonesome lives, existing close by, which never meet, never touch or ever look in the eyes of the other. Two bottles floating in water. Two split, fractioned souls roll and run.
Shimmer is a dance that joins what was apparently separate. The dancer’s bodies are connected by the kidneys, organs that symbolize sexuality and survival.
In Rumble the dancers simply look at each other in the eyes and see themselves in the other. As the two bodies approach silence and stillness, shadows and life impressions lurk behind on a wall, like samskaras; reverberating and naturally ceasing.