Dancing Dragons

Catherine Hsu, Art
Saagar Asnani, Viola

Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major: Gigue (1717-27)
by Johann Sebastian Bach

The music for this portal is the final movement from JS Bach’s third Cello Suite in C Major, transcribed for the viola. Derived from a fifteenth century dance in Britain, the gigue (originating from the French verb: giquer – to frolic) is an energetic dance that involves a lot of leaps and jumps, and is often characterized as lighthearted and free spirited.

The Gigue has two main themes that play against each other in a sort of conversation, inspiring Catherine’s idea to have two dancing dragons. There is something akin to binary code-switching in the play between one voice, theme, dragon to the next, and that translates to the act of playing it. Going from the restrained and noble first theme to the unbounded and bacchanalian second theme and then back again in the space of just a few notes requires a great deal of bow control and musical phrasing.

As the tension mounts, Saagar begins to play two notes simultaneously (double stops), and the dragons gather together to dance in a frenetic whirling duet. The movement ends with an inquisitive and whimsical codetta that resolves the built-up harmonic tension and leads the dragons to search for the comfort of their roosts.

* Bach, Johann Sebastian. 6 Suites for Solo Violoncello. Transcribed and edited by Simon Rowland-Jones. Leipzig, Germany: Editions Peters.

You land in a mountain valley. The white fog is thick, but you can see a zen garden in front of you, framed by a red fence. Directly in front of you is a stone path. On either side of the stone path is a sand plot, each with stacks of flat, round stones. Two long Eastern dragons hover above the sand plots; one is white and accented with red, the other is black and accented with blue. They dance in conjunction with the music, sometimes alternatively and sometimes together.

The stone path leads to a few stone steps, where there is an arched red wooden bridge, flanked by gold statues of dragons on either side. On the other side of the bridge is a small platform in the middle of a pond. The platform is beveled with the symbol of yin and yang above which the portal back to the landscape hovers. The pond is encircled with small rocks and situated in the middle of a green lawn. Palm plants and rocks are scattered around the lawn, while a cherry blossom tree in half bloom stands in the back left corner.