Dancer and Choreographer: LeAnn Yannelli

Percussionists: I-Jen Fang and Elayne Harris

FOLK/ART
Program included works by Beethoven, Berio, Biscardi, Grieg, Lou Harrison, Haydn, and Piazzola

Staunton Music Festival
August 23, 2012
Trinity Episcopal Church
Staunton, Virginia

Music for Witch Dance, for two percussionists (1983), was written for Annabelle Gamson’s reconstruction of Mary Wigman’s Heksedans (1926) based on fragments of the dance recorded in a 1929 film about Mary Wigman and a description of her work in Rudolph Bach’s Das Mary Wigman Büch. The music takes its initial ideas from Willi Goetze’s score of 1926 (also in the film and book), originally consisting of three gongs, drum and cymbal, which stylistically reflects the primitive, childlike nature and austerity of the Expressionist period.

Witch Dance – Chester Biscardi from Bravi Films on Vimeo.

Music: Chester Biscardi

Percussionists: I-Jen Fang and Brian Smith

Staunton Music Festival
Trinity Episcopal Church
Staunton, Virginia
August 11, 2018