Music for a performance by Roshanak Morrowatian
1. Bags
2. Places (feat. Roshanak Morrowatian)
3. Hops & Games
4. Traces
5. Obsolete Veil
6. Breath
7. Landscaping
cd/dl/stream, May 2024
Note: all profit from the cd and download will be donated to Dutch Performing Arts, a campaign for Gaza Children.
More info at theatreday.org
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By now I’ve done various other projects with Roshanak Morrowatian, but Kites was the first one, and it holds a special place in my heart. So I’m glad the score is now available as an album.
The Kites performance deals with the question “What is it like to have to flee your homeland at a young age and grow up in an asylum seekers’ centre, in a ‘limbo’ between past and future?” It’s a solo dance piece, based on Roshanak’s own experiences of being on the run and arriving in a new, unfamiliar country. The subject is addressed in poetic, but at times also powerfully insistent and even euphoric ways, strengthened by visual projections and spoken texts.
Working with Roshanak and the rest of the team was a joy. Witnessing the choreography taking shape as the music was being (re)built and refined was fantastic, but the highlight was Roshanak’s parents visiting me, to hand me an old cassette with Iranian hit songs that the family used to play. There’s various snippets of the tape woven into the Kites music, which combines my usual abstract electronic sound world with Persian influences (without sounding too Fourth World-ish, I hope).
Of course you’re missing Roshanak’s strong performance, and Laisvie Andrea Ochoa Gaevska’s mesmerizing video projections, but I hope the music itself will transport you to intriguing places nonetheless.
Rutger Zuydervelt, February 2023