Composition | Performance
MK Company
Maqam is an Arabic word with many meanings: place, position, station of a process, scale. It is above all a melodic system of traditional Arabic music, i.e. a technique of musical improvisation widely practiced throughout the Middle East.
The starting point of our investigation is the ‘concert’ form, with live music orchestrated by Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch and the singing of Amir ElSaffar, who is not only one of the most promising artists of contemporary jazz but also a profound connoisseur of the Iraqi maqam tradition.
Combining this particular hybrid sound with mk’s clouds of bodies and letting the intertwining of choreographic and musical substance melt into the powerful reverberation of human voice, pushes us to reinvent a performative and spectacular attitude: the formal relationship between sound and choreographic environment will be re-written through elementary, discontinuous and point-like events for the bodies, that gradually transform the concert into a choreography.
This is the position we are looking for, as if we build the presence of any body like the manifestation of a transient wonderful chant. Maqam is also the first dance production supported by the brand new strategic unit of four of the most representative live arts festivals in Italy.
