I wanted to play music with my feet.
Even as a child, I expressed the intention of wanting to do something with music and dance later on. This fixed transdisciplinary idea disappeared during my school years. But only seemingly. As was only natural, I first learned the recorder, then the piano. But my grandmother infected me with the joy of dancing long before I had to go to school. I had to listen very carefully to a minuet or a polka before she showed me the steps and gestures that I should dance precisely to the music. Then we looked for the appropriate costume in her collection, she made me dance in it and taught me to refine and internalize the movements and expressions. This rehearsing and performing was my greatest happiness and a beloved contrast to the equally beloved wild life in nature.
While playing the piano, I experienced hardly any connection to my body, not even to my ears. It was exhausting to have to sit so still and just let my eyes and fingers work. But I knew inside that I couldn’t give up. When a substitute came to my lesson, she immediately gave me the six Bulgarian dances from Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos VI and finally ignited my passion for making music. The odd rhythms grabbed me. I felt them inside me as I played them and experienced a similar enthusiasm as when I danced…
Read the entire PDF article in German
Photos© Robertas Rūdys
