Relative Calm
Original Version (1981) by Lucinda Childs. Music by Jon Gibson. Set and Lighting Design by Robert Wilson.
Triptych Version (2022) by Lucinda Childs and Robert Wilson. Music by Jon Gibson, Igor Stravinsky and John Adams. Text by Susan Sontag. Costumes by Tiziana Barbaranelli.
Original Version: World Première on November 16, 1981 at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, France
Triptych Version: World Première on July 17, 2022 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, Italy
The original version of Relative Calm, premièred in 1981 in Strasbourg, and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music later that same year, was a dance piece by Lucinda Childs with designs by Robert Wilson and music by Jon Gibson. It consisted of four parts: I. “Rise” — II. “Race” — III. “Reach” — IV. “Return.” For the 2022 version, Part I of the original, Gibson’s “Rise,” was paired with John Adams’s “Light Over Water” (1985), and Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” (1922) as the centerpiece; hence the nickname “Triptych Version.” Two short knee plays connect the choreographies, with Lucinda Childs speaking Susan Sontag’s text “Description (of a description).”