Five intermezzi for piano (for the ballet: anon)

Choreography: Chris Marney
Music by Delibes, Shostakovitch and Saint-Saens
First performed at the Platform Theatre, London, March 2013

For his sparkling work for Ballet Central’s 2013 tour, Chris Marney asked composer, Philip Feeney, to create a series of brief linking intermezzi, short piano pieces to connect the larger episodes in his narrative ballet, anon. It was an assignment Feeney had undertaken several times previously, especially in the work of Didy Veldman. In Momo, for Bern Ballet, he constructed a full-length by fusing electronic atmospheric soundscapes with the music of Shostakovich.

The task here was to create links that led seamlessly into the next section, whether it be a Shostakovich waltz or the March from Sylvia, in order to create a unified continuous whole, a real sense of a complete one-act ballet. The music is constructed in a way that it merges effortlessly into the next section, using material that is compatible and sometimes derived from the original, and in so doing controls the overall tonal configuration of the piece.

Marney’s witty take on books coming to life, and Bethany Pike’s memorable performance as ‘The Girl’, contributed to a delightful work, one that charmed audiences throughout the tour, and subsequently at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.