Created for
Richard Alston Dance Company
 

Music 
Frédéric Chopin - Selected piano pieces
 
Lighting 
Charles Balfour
 
Costumes
Peter Todd (for New York Theatre Ballet, Sylvia Taalson Nolan)

 

Duration

22 minutes

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Originally danced by a cast of

2 women 3 men 

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Video Excerpt

Filmed, edited and produced by New York Theatre Ballet (NYTB). 

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Chopin's music is loaded with dance associations but until Such Longing I had never dared touch him. His music is of such an intensity, such swirls of romanticism crashing headlong into hushed reverie. This piece is about Chopin in exile in Paris, deeply longing to be home in Warsaw. He never went back.

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I later restaged the dance for New York Theatre Ballet (NYTB), who perform the final Etude in this video, in which as friends leave for home Chopin does indeed stay behind.

First performed by the Richard Alston Dance Company at the Sheffield Lyceum on 11 February 2005.