In This Cosmic Dance, Our Spirits Accrue

In This Cosmic Dance, Our Spirits Accrue was written for the soprano Johanna Vargas at the Académie Voix Nouvelles of the Fondation Royaumont in 2023, where I worked with Philippe Leroux, Du Yun and Diana Soh, and was premiered by her in the Salle des Charpentes of the abbey on 10 September 2023. It lasts twelve or thirteen minutes and is scored for solo voice, a small set of objects, fixed media and movement.

The piece is a meditative exploration of cosmic interconnectedness and the human spirit’s journey through time and space. Using movement and fixed media alongside voice and objects, it creates an ethereal space where the physical and the metaphysical intertwine — the singer moving through a darkened room lit only by what she carries, setting small resonances going and leaving them behind her, the tape holding a slow field of her own processed voice around her like weather. The composition reflects on coexistence and transcendence and asks the audience to immerse themselves in a cosmic narrative rather than follow a text.

Reviewing the premiere for ResMusica, Michèle Tosi wrote of “a scenography and the darkness of the space… a kind of sanctuary prefiguring some morbid sacrifice… catching the eye as much as the ear.”