Created for
Richard Alston Dance Company
 

Music

Robert Schumann

 

Lighting

Zeynep Kepekli

 

Costumes

Fotini Domou

 

Duration

29 minutes

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Originally danced by a cast of

5 women 5 men 

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Video Excerpt

Filmed by Marco Benozzi and Steve Jackman at Malvern Theatres. 

Edited by Steve Jackman. Produced by The Place.

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Robert Schumann poured his young life into this music, overtly portraying his confusions and emotional extremes. He invented the characters of Florestan and Eusebius to express his troubled dual personality and the love of his short life Clara Wieck had to deal with both of these.

 

I made Carnaval for a dear friend, the dance writer David Vaughan. David was Merce Cunningham’s incomparable archivist and also the biographer of Frederick Ashton and so it was David who enabled me to feel it was fine to love both these sharply contrasting artists, for which I will thank him for the rest of my life. That I was thinking of Ashton as I made this piece is, I think, pretty evident.

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The creation of Carnaval was made possible through the generous support of the John Ellerman Foundation.

First performed at Festival Theatre Edinburgh on 22 September 2017. Supported by Festival Theatre Edinburgh.