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“Habits and routines and the struggle to change them……” Created for choreographer Sarah Major.

• David Downes: Saltwater  Year: 1993 

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The rousing nature of Celtic music was the basis for this piece which deals with a theme of aggressive competition. It is the final section of a composition commissioned for dance by Michael Parmenter.

• David Downes: Saltwater  Year: 1993 

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In this, the opening sequence of another dance work commissioned by Michael Parmenter, a man and a woman slowly emerge from within a muddy riverbank.

• David Downes: Saltwater  Year: 1993 

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The Love Sonnets of Michelangelo I wrote for Michael Parmenter, with whom I worked on a programme entitled Between Two Fires (also included was a dance-theatre work I created collaboratively with Michael, using his voice as well as his body, with imagery extracted from the diaries of Franz Kafka.) At the time I was focused on different styles of melody, having just completed my Five Melodies for Piano. Inspired by the lovely voices of some of the then current students in our School of Music, I felt that women’s voices gave the expressive quality I wanted, as well as providing a useful ‘cover’ for the overtly homo-erotic tenor of the texts. The original production used film, shot by my good friend Bayley Watson, showed the dancer’s prostrate figure, swathed in bandages. As the performance unfolded the cloth was gradually cut and pealed back by hands belonging to an old man whose face we never saw, the intended metaphor being of the sculptor cutting away marble to reveal the male form that he sensed already existed within the stone.

The work has since had other performances that have discarded the theatrical elements, most successfully when each setting is prefaced by a reading of the poem in translation.

These settings of some of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s most personal sonnets articulate the anguish of love and desire, as well as the despair of old age. The musical style combines the theatricality of Italian bel canto with the direct expressivity of folksong.

• Body: Love Sonnets of Michelangelo; facsimile 

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• Jack Body and Michael Parmenter: Love Sonnets 

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• Baroque Voices: How Great is the Pleasure   Year: 2001 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 6 - Composer Portrait: Jack Body  Year: 2003 

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• Limbs Dance Company: Poi 

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• Edwin Carr: Sinfonietta and Promenade 

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• Edwin Carr: Poems, Sinfonietta and Promenade 

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• Edwin Carr: Orchestral Works and Symphony No. 4  Year: 1995 

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Undoubtedly, this is one of Whitehead’s more unusual collaborations. The work, intended for five dancers and organ, with soprano added at the composer’s request, was to have been performed in five cathedrals around Britain during the summer of 1982. Due to the cancellation of the dance component however, the work received performance in only one of the cathedrals – Carlisle – but was later presented with a solo dancer, Bronwyn Judge, at the 1987 Sonic Circus in Wellington. The singer on that occasion was Glenys Taylor and the organist Douglas Mews. The composer initially delayed beginning work on the piece, since her sister was expecting a baby, and a Requiem did not seem an appropriate preoccupation. The successful birth was however followed by two close-family deaths and it was these which provided the composer with the emotional impetus to proceed with the composition. (Programme note by Emma Carle and Jack Body).

• Whitehead: Requiem; facsimile 

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• Whitehead: Requiem; computer-set  Year: 2001 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 3 - Composer Portrait: Gillian Whitehead  Year: 2000 

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This work, composed for choreographer Daniel Belton, explores various aspects of beach and ocean life.

• David Downes: Saltwater  Year: 1993 

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A moonlit scene on a lonely beach with long slow waves rising and receding. Gradually they become more intense; their inward and outward criss-crossing revealing a dangerous undertow. The music reaches a climax, and, certain motives representing two of the principal dancers are heard. The mysterious ‘chorus’ of sirens, of Part 1, is briefly heard, and the principal Siren appears moving front stage while the ‘chorus’ recedes. The principal male dancer now rises, and in a dream, and is drawn towards her. She leads him closer to the sea and they dance to the ‘sea’ and ‘siren’ music. As he tries to hold her, she again and again is allusive, and taunts him deeper and deeper until the sea engulfs him. He drowned and thrown back by the waves onto the beach.

While living in retirement in Oakura I was given a synopsis by Val Deakin to write a ballet for her Dance Theatre in New Plymouth. She choreographed the second movement only and it was performed in New Plymouth with an ad hoc orchestra in 1989, myself conducting.

Hugh Dixon, 22 November 2009

• Dixon: Undertow at Oakura; computer-set 

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• APO play Dixon and Lodge 

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