Große Fuge (Great Fugue)
As part of the 2025 Düsseldorf Festival
Dance, Concert Music & Sound Dance
Beethoven meets contemporary dance: The Rothko String Quartet and dancer and choreographer Tian Gao create a danced concert about questions of time and transience. The focus is on Ludwig van Beethoven’s „Great Fugue“, which overwhelmed Beethoven’s contemporaries but which, according to Igor Stravinsky, constitutes the „most perfect musical miracle“ and is „contemporary forever“. The musical dramaturgy relates Beethoven’s mysterious work to baroque and contemporary perspectives and draws a bold arc over music drawn from four centuries.
Tian Gao was born in Wuhan, China, and studied at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music, the Minzu University of China in Beijing, and at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. After graduating, she worked with companies and artists such as dance collective Laborgras, Michael Laub / Remote Control Productions and Paper Tiger Theater. She has been dancing with Sasha Waltz & Guests since 2018.
cast
Stage & Lighting: Giorgio de Santis
Tian Gao is a Berlin-based dancer originally from Wuhan, China. She completed her master’s degree at Folkwang University of the Arts. She has been working as a dancer with Sasha Waltz & Guests since 2018. As an individual artist, she has collaborated with companies and artists such as Laborgras, Michael Laub/Remote Control Productions and Paper Tiger Collective. For her multidisciplinary projects, she has collaborated with musicians and visual artists and has performed in Berlin, Essen, Wuppertal, Wuhan and Beijing, as well as elsewhere. As a choreographer, she always strives to reflect on social issues and relationships through the poetry of the body.
The Rothko String Quartet (RSQ), consisting of Marc Kopitzki (viola), Jakob Nierenz (cello), Joosten Ellée (violin) and William Overcash (violin), was founded in Lüneburg in 2017. The two violinists specialise in the study of early and new music which lends the ensemble a high degree of flexibility when dealing with different styles of classical music and enables a wide range of concert programmes. Embodying this stylistic diversity, the RSQ feels it is its mission to bring to light the music of marginalised composers as well as lesser-known works in classical music history. The four musicians’ collaborative spirit not only shapes their work with contemporary composers and artists from various disciplines but also their attitude towards each other during rehearsals. In addition to performing newly composed music, the RSQ is interested in dissolving the boundaries between (musical) genres and collaborates with producers, composers, improvisers and visual artists. Important partners were Mirna Bogdanovic and the Holon Trio (jazz), Sadie Weis (visual arts) and dOP (techno). Together with their partner PODIUM Esslingen, the RSQ develops exciting concert programmes that are performed at major festivals for classical music. This is why it regularly plays at the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele, the Düsseldorf Festival! as well as at PODIUM Festival Esslingen and performed celebrated debuts at Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Thuringian Bach Weeks and Mozartfest Würzburg in 2024.
credits
a PODIUM Esslingen production