Goldberg Variations

Goldberg Variations
Jurij Konjar

Date: Nov 18 and 19
Venue: Tanzquartier/Leopoldmuseum

The memory of a moment three years ago: I was on my way home after a rehearsal in the evening. Then there is a gap in my memory... I am in the hospital. Someone tells me that I was attacked four days earlier. This happened two months before my 30th birthday and was the beginning of my encounter with the Goldberg Variations. Apart from the fact that I have lost my sense of smell, everything is back to normal. Only my perspective on what can happen in a moment has changed...

In 2007 I started watching the video of the iconographic 1968 performance of The Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, played by Glenn Gould, improvised by Steve Paxton. Initially I copied the movements and then concentrated on what I could see beyond them. Since 2009, the improvisation of the Goldberg Variations has been a kind of old friend with whom I attempt to spend time every day. Using improvisation and dealing with the video afresh every day, I have checked the questions that crop up and given myself the freedom to fill any gaps that appear with my own imagination and my own understanding. Things disentangled themselvess and I continued through a phase of work in Buenos Aires, which I spent on my own, and another one in dialogue with Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson. The process became independent and it turned into a praxis that assumed the form of a bubble of the here and now and has become a one-hour encounter between the music, me and the audience. (Jurij Konjar)

(c) Jurij Konjar; Massimo Battista; Angela Bedekovic