Dance of the Dictators is an afterthought. It was composed two years after the original concert performance of the rest of Constantinople took place in Toronto. In the original concert performance there was an intermission between Ah Kalleli and On Death and Dying. It was decided afterwards to have the work performed in its entirety without any break and, when it was performed in this manner in Ottawa a few months later, it became clear that something was needed to musically bridge these two movements. There was also the need to spread the piano trio movements within the work in a way that made more structural sense and to balance the unique composition style of Old Photographs (the 7th movement) with something similar elsewhere in the work. Dance of the Dictators addresses all these needs. The title is a sardonic reference to the fact that, during my adolescence in Greece under a military junta regime, cultural nationalism was preached but, in the higher echelons of power, tangos were danced. It was also influenced by the fact that during the time of its composition there was a strange and unholy "dance" for public opinion taking place by the principals of the escalating Iraq conflict which eventually led up to the American invasion of that country.
8 сен 2024
