On June 19-26, 2018, the 1st year of an interesting and unconventional event called OPERA NOVA took place in the premises of the New Stage of the National Theater in Prague, which, according to the artistic director of the ND Opera, Petr Kofroň, aimed to support contemporary music and musical theater. The festival welcomed nine musical theater ensembles from the Czech and Slovak Republics. One of the participants was the Slovak interdisciplinary artistic group Cluster ensemble.
The internationally recognized Cluster ensemble was founded in 2009 by the Slovak musician Ivan Šiller. It all started with the Slovak premiere of the composition Six Pianos by Steve Reich in a Bratislava piano shop. Since then, the loose grouping of guest artists centered around the artistic couple Šiller and Király has been performing regularly on domestic and foreign stages. The collection is devoted primarily to the interpretation of the works of contemporary composers and musical personalities of the 20th century, author's projects that push the boundaries of artistic interpretation, and educational projects. To date, almost fifty musicians, dancers, artists and other artists from Europe and the USA have collaborated with the ensemble. Their debut album Cluster ensemble Plays Philip Glass was released in June 2016 by the Slovak publishing house Hevhetia and the American publishing house Orange Mountain Music. In the fall of 2017, they completed a successful tour in New York. *
As part of the OPERA NOVA festival, the ensemble performed a successful performance to the music of the American composer Philip Glass Dance with changing parts. The performance was created in collaboration with the choreographer and actress Petra Fornayová and premiered at the Nu Dance Fest in the fall of 2015. Since then, it has been performed several times at festivals in Slovakia and the Czech Republic with great acclaim. In an unusual performance, Glass's rarely played piece Music with Changing Parts is combined with movement and video. It is a very original performance based on a now classic minimalist composition from the 1970s. The Cluster ensemble interprets the composition through three electric organs, flute, clarinet, saxophone, electric guitar, analog synthesizer and vibraphone, 12 dancers and live video. The dance component of the performance is based on a similar principle as the score. Like music, dance is made up of patterns – in this case movement patterns. The choreography is precisely given, but the dancers interpret the individual movements differently and everyone can choose how much time to stay in the patterns, while none must be missed. The body, while constantly maintaining the rhythm, offers images - created by one dancer, but also created in waves by the whole group. The music and dance are complemented by a live video by Jakub Pišek, known for example from the Nano VJs project, whose final form is always created directly during the performance from prepared fragments of filmed choreography. *
A visitor to the festival who had the opportunity to see this performance at the National Theater certainly left the theater with a strong and hard-to-describe feeling. The music, dance and video in their repetitive urgency were at first restless and even irritating, but if the viewer was able to turn off the need for a rational analysis of what is happening on stage in front of his sight and hearing for a moment, and let himself be carried away by the symbiosis of sound, movement and image , in the end he definitely went through an internally cleansing process, perhaps comparable only to meditation. And that is exactly what true art is all about. One that affects a person directly in his essence and lingers in him long after the performance. And thanks to the Cluster ensemble for this experience. I believe that the ensemble will return to Prague as soon as possible with some new interesting project.
Vladimír Dubeň
*Source: Cluster ensemble