Pianist Kyungmi Nam gives the world premiere of Douglas DaSilva's "Animals - Brazil for the EMULSION/EMOTION event at Scorca Hall, National Opera Center, New York City, November 11, 2023.
I. Tatu (Armadillo): The Three Banded Armadillo rolls himself up into a ball as a defensive mechanism. This makes him easy to hunt if you are a human and want some fresh Armadillo meat to throw on the churrasco.
This defensive mechanism is also worthless against motor vehicles. Tatu doesn’t stand a chance against a mining truck.
This piece is the emotional blue print (or is it a chalk outline) of the last day in a Tatu’s life.
II. Preguiça (sloth [the critter & the deadly sin): I have a long story of how I came up with the title for the piece. I won’t share that with you now. The duration of this piece is about 70 seconds. I’m afraid that if you start reading a long-winded tale, for that’s what it will be, filled with minute details of dead creatures on the side of the highway in the mountains of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the colors of the forest, the banana, guava, jabuticaba, and pine trees, the lightning-scorched tropical alpine grasses, the red dust-encrusted mining trucks screaming down the highway, miraculously never spilling their loads of iron ore…you can see how this could take some time.
Instead, I will sum up the entire experience with a joke and instructions on how to tell it:
“Why did the sloth cross the road?”
(Speak slowly and enunciate. Most people are not expecting to hear the word “sloth” and will ask you to repeat the question. It’s not a big deal and can even add to the length of what is really a very short joke. This is an opportunity for you to practice “reading your audience.”)
Shake your head, look disappointed and say, “Never mind…he didn’t make it.”
For the advanced crowd the “he didn’t make it” can be eliminated.
For a humorless crowd, skip the joke and ask the following question to spark an evening of interesting conversation:
“Do sloths decay slower than other dead things?”
III. Carcará: Carcará lifts his head to scan down the mountain. The early morning sun is to his back. A small meal of carrion, found in the scraps of wood and debris in the yellow dumpster is not enough to end the hunt, the forage. The flat roofed houses glow orange in the sunrise. Smoke from yesterday’s brush fire sits upon the hills in the distance like a stubborn fog.
A small red car strains its way up the paved hill in his direction.
Carcará feels safe: metal to his rear and flanks. The sun rises slowly behind him.
The driver squints to see an orange head slowly rise from dumpster. Suddenly Carcará hops onto the lip of the steel box and spreads his huge black wings and the white stripes capture the sun. The driver slows, almost stops, and watches as Carcará, with a focused determination, a violence of action, launches himself from the dumpster and down the steep hill. At first, Carcará almost skims the macadam; but as he moves forward he gains elevation, seizes the updraft of heat rising from the road, and with barely a flap of his wings, conquers the sky.
29 окт 2024
