Choreography: Caniparoli
Music: Bach and Traditional African Ryhthms
Caniparoli’s Lambarena is a joyous celebration of
dance and an exhilarating integration of cultures. “It would
have been obvious to do classical steps with the Bach and ethnic movement
with the African,” he says. “But the score is a marriage
of these two kinds of music, and I wanted the choreography to be the same
thing. I wanted to show that you can do either kind of movement
to both kinds of music. It’s very much a ballet, and it’s
my own vocabulary, but it’s influenced by African movement.”
Striving to keep the style as accurate as possible, Caniparoli consulted
with African dance specialists Zakariya Sao Diouf and Naomi Gedo Johnson-Washington
to help him blend African dance with ballet.
Lambarena is set to selections from an unusual score of the same name
that combines traditional African music with the melodies of Johann Sebastian
Bach. The score, an homage to Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer,
unites the two integral elements that formed Schweitzer’s “sound
world,” the music of Bach and the native melodies and rhythms of
his adopted homeland Gabon. Schweitzer is well known for his interpretation
of Bach’s music and also for his work of establishing a hospital
and dedicating his life to service as a mission doctor in Lambarena in
the province of Gabon, Africa.
The 1995, the San Francisco Ballet World Premiere of Lambarena was made
possible in part by a 1994 Choo-San Goh Award for choreography from the
Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation.
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