Dangerous Ground Productions Presents Michael Attias’ Music of Battle

Music of Battle is a new self-contained revisiting of the score to the acclaimed play Battle of Black and Dogs as it was performed at the Ohio Theatre in May 2003 as part of the Koltes NY 2003 Festival. This very special concert will feature the original musicians and actors in an uninterrupted flow of music and text that recreates the darkness, humor, and poetry of Koltes’ landscapes. Battle of Black and Dogs is set on a post-colonial construction site in West Africa. It is a violent, metaphysical operatic western that intertwines themes of sex, race, money, and power in an incantatory language that can rise to arias of hallucinatory beauty only to descend to obsessive rants of trivial and equally hallucinatory obscenity.
The music combines samples, notation, live electronics and various improvisational strategies to create a world of longing visited by Burundi girls, Schubert, Nepalese fruit bats, and Johnny Guitar. It attempts to describe both the outer landscape of the play and the inner psyches of the four characters. The actors, under Doris Mirescu’s masterful direction, will integrate pieces from the original production into the musical texture.