Described as an ‘interspecies performance’, Dance of the Bee brings together three pianos, Melbourne’s Astra choir and a live swarm of bees housed inside a transparent hive to create music that moves between soundscapes, virtuosic arrangements and improvisation. As renowned contemporary pianist Michael Kieran Harvey states, the idea was formulated together with composer, scientist and apiarist Martin Friedel. “We had been talking for a long time about the effects of climate change on insect species, and he was expressing concern about this mysterious dieback that occurs in bee colonies,” says Harvey. “There are several major problems we face as a species ourselves, one of which is the loss of the biosphere. Bees are like the canary in the cage really.”
The pair’s collaboration also stemmed from Friedel’s intimate knowledge of large apiarist organisations and the conflicting interests that wreak havoc with the natural world. “There’s actually a lot of pressure from international agricultural companies like Monsanto, who would prefer to completely wipe out bees so that pollination is not a factor in the food cycle. They would then control the entire food production process and it would become impossible for people to grow their own vegetables, because there is no pollinating insects. For these reasons, it’s with some alarm that Martin and I have been getting together and asking, ‘what are we as artists able to do?’”.
In response to that question Friedel and Havey have created a performance and installation that not only features bees as an integral aspect, but actively involves the animals within the composition. “The idea is that we create a feedback loop, so that they react to whatever we’re doing and that we react to them. It becomes like a joint improvisation,” says Harvey. “They’re very intelligent as a whole. They will buzz at different frequencies. They will buzz chaotically if there are threats, and they will also buzz if they are content. Martin has been able to isolate the ‘middle C’ of contentment, which the hive operates on when everything is going along well. If that’s not a metaphor for a contented society, I don’t know what is.”
As well as interacting with the bees, the idiosyncratic noise of the species also influences the experimental methods Harvey approaches the piano with. “There are so many ways of extracting sound from the piano as a resonator. One of the most obvious ways is that strings tend to vibrate. They tend to buzz, if you like. These methods of prepared piano, they’re just ways of trying to achieve a different musical outcome, which will have its own development based on the starting point – which is the mimicry of the bee. We use the piano as a simulacrum of the bee colony, with all of its strings and all of its components acting together.”
Taking the metaphor even further, Harvey will perform the first half of the concert with a ‘swarm’ of piano pieces. “Just as the bee has provided mankind for millennia with honey, they are now providing us with music,” he explains. “In the same way, we’re providing music by the hive of Australian composition: a broad selection of pieces from fantastic Australian composers.”
As Harvey passionately states, it’s of severe importance for contemporary art music to tackle equally contemporary issues. Unwilling to settle into the tropes of classical music, Dance of the Bee is a production that is designed to push boundaries not just musically, but intellectually.
“I think that is the only reason to be an artist,” says Harvey. “It’s how you interpret the world, and the world at the moment is going in an alarming direction. We’re accelerating off the cliff, and as a poor artist – as somebody who is not very influential and working in a small area of the arts – how do you do productions that aren’t just a mere luxury, or a mere frippery? How can you draw people’s attention to these issues in an entertaining way, but still with a serious underlining message? That makes one feel, as an artist, that you are doing something to try and alter people’s perceptions.”
Ultimately, Dance of the Bee is a work to inspire change. Arriving as art music with an activist heart, it asks the audience to reconsider their relationship with the world around them. As the bees sing and enact life within a fully fledged microcosm, a fragile connection between their world and ours is illuminated. “Appreciate the bee not as some nuisance insect that stings you occasionally, but as a friend that has been with us for millennia and is now facing annihilation,” says Harvey. “Just think about how unfair that is. When a friend is in need, it is a friend indeed.”
BY JAMES DI FABRIZIO
