Shop for Music
About the Composer
Dale Trumbore
Dale Trumbore
Vital Dance (SATB)
A piece about our hazy, ever-shifting perception of time.
-
Vital Dance
SATB Chorus & Piano
This piece was commissioned by the Eastern Tennessee State University Chorale (Matthew Potterton, Conductor). In Vital Dance, a night of insomnia gives way to a meditation on life and death. This piece alternates between a precise, almost metronomic motive and freer, lulling arpeggios—a hazy dream-state in which we’re counting our minutes or suspended in a timeless dance.
Text
In bed, listening to the metronome in my ear, the tiny timekeeper
who will not let me sleep, taking life with each beat into the drum,
tap by tap, a Morse code message in a long-lost language.
Why do I sleep knowing that time will pass as I do? I am free to dance
when Father Time is
drowsy, lulled by the white coin in the sky, suspended
between heads or tails. In those moments, we wait, hold
our breath, and dance together in familiar emptiness from which we came
and shall return one day, when our knees are weak and our hair a color
akin to the moon.
One two heads three four tails five six last seven eight day
hush
—Abby N. Lewis,
from Reticent (Grateful Steps, 2016; used with permission
$2.35 per licensed PDF
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.