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Jaap Flier about the movie of musician Barend Schipper and filmmaker
Arno Cupédo
“Barend Schipper: Villa Concert”
“A Rebirth of Romantic music in our Intercultural Time”
Jaap Flier is the first knighted dancer of the Netherlands.
He was cofounder, dancer and artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater.
Of the School voor Nieuwe Dansontwikkeling (School for New Dance development)
in Amsterdam Jaap Flier was study leader and he was the artistic director of
the Australian Dance Theatre. Flier still is fully active as a freelance
dancer, choreographer and actor and has at present 55 years of stage experience
that he continually uses for new and renewing projects. The words of Jaap Flier
are put to paper by Meyke Beekman after he watched and listened to the movie
during a private showing in August 2004.
“The movie ‘Barend Schipper: Villa Concert’ is about
so much more than music alone: it is Barend Schipper’s contact with the audience and the singing that unnoticedly
turns into acting. In his dealing with the music and with the grand piano it is
as if he dances.”
“I experienced the movie in a way… what shall I say,
you can see it watching the audience: he completely takes you with it. You
enter another world. Barend Schipper is totally submerged in the music during
the film of the villa concert and at the same time the communication is fully
natural during playing and in between in contact with those present.”
“For me the movie is a total-experience. I felt as if I was present in the villa. On the
big screen you see and hear even more than during the live concert because of
the camerawork that sometimes moves with the music and because of the close-ups
by Arno Cupédo and Aafke Sterenberg. The direction and editing of Schipper and
Cupédo is strikingly well: it makes that music and image have become one
experience and that is very special! It
invites you to be taken in by it.”
“The music is organical. There is a beautiful organical structure and it
continues throughout the concert. Sometimes Schipper uses logic in music but
fortunately you never hear something you would expect. The organical shape
stays intact this way, also because of the way that Barend Schipper takes care
of true contrasts in his music, and of unexpected moments.
The expressions on his face that are filmed while he plays the grand piano are
always clearly from within, arising from the music. They are striking, moving,
humoristic sometimes, but always natural: the music clearly comes from within:
it hás to be this way.
When I listen I sometimes think to know for certain
what will be next, but the music always ends somewhere else. That’s very
pleasant for me, not needing to listen to music that you already expected.
Often this goes very gradually, and there are some moments when it changes
quite suddenly. The continuing movement always stays intact this way. It takes
you along, as a flowing river.”
“For me the climax was the last work before the
intermission: ‘Danse de Nijinski’… It has become completely obvious here: Schipper is a dancer when he plays the
grand piano!”
“It’s beautiful, the way the singing voice changes
into reciting voice during the letters of Paul Gauguin: fortunately it never
becomes melodramatic. It never crosses that line, though the text could provoke
that.
This way emotions always find their natural proportion: Schipper follows the
emotions closely. It is an existential text and that makes that it is sometimes
ironical, even sarcastic at times: and that is what he does too: he becomes it.
The contact with the audience is very natural at the same time. The getting up
from the music to the audience, sitting down again from there; playing while he
becomes what he sings…
The movie truly is a beautiful experience!”
☼