Dreamtime

This work was written for the Netherlands Dance Theater at the request of the great Czechoslovakian choreographer, Jiri Kylian. At the time of its composing, I was intensely influenced by ‘Dreamtime’, a myth handed down from generation to generation among the Australian aborigines. Just as a dream, for all its vividness of detail, points to an unanticipated, unreal whole, so in this work short episodes hang suspended in seeming incoherency to form a musical whole. The subtle variations in rhythm and changes in tempo only serve to emphasize the sensation of floating in the music. Toru Takemitsu