Sometimes the sea reminds me of Debussy's La Mer, but everytime I listen to La Mer, it never reminds me of the sea. I discussed this fact and relationship between music and other arts with Chendra Panatan, "my" choreographer, and we agreed that he would do something with the same lines of Whitman's The Sleepers that had inspired me to write my little piece for violin and piano.
And so we did it today. Chendra knows a very good Indonesian photographer in London, Dian Rosita, who is --like Chendra-- doing her Master's degree under the Chevening scholarship. His idea was to make slides of himself posing, interpreting those Whitman lines, to be projected with my music being played, either live or made into a DVD with the music . Nobody accompanies the other. I never, by the way, showed my music (it was a birthday present for Geoffrey King last January the 16th) to them. The idea would be producing a totally new musical & photographic piece based on Whitman's lines, but it wouldn't really matter if the listener (and watcher) would NOT connect it with Whitman.
So, what will it be ? First of all, a collaboration of 4 artists : Whitman (obviously, posthomously collaborating with us !), Chendra, Dian Rosita (Tita) and me . But do you really call it collaboration ? There is only one element that unites us all, Whitman's lines.
Anyway, I was with them today while they took those photos. We did it in the studio of Middlesex University where Chendra is studying. By the way, it is built in the most beautiful English countryside and the daffodils are about to expose their charm. Everytime Chendra does something, he amazes me . Tita couldn't stop clicking her camera today, since Chendra never ran out of ideas of posing, sculpting and shaping his lean body, moving, dancing . What was just a small piece for a birthday gift is now an important piece for me. He has his own interpretation of Whitman, but that's what will make this piece fresh and new. And I think (not sure, though) that this is his first self-choreography for still-pictures. So, now am very much looking forward for listening, and watching, "The Sleepers". Will it work ? Or will it be a failure of another experimental collaborative work of art ?
