Georges Aperghis - Le Corps a Corps (1978) | Performed by Darren Gallacher

Le Corps a Corps for Speaking Percussionist and Zarb (1978) (English Translation) - Georges Aperghis (trans. Damien Harron)

Performed by Darren Gallacher
Lighting by Tony Sweeton
Filming and Sound by Darren Gallacher

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This recording acts as documentation of a sharing held in June 2023 as part of my PhD research project Body World Crossings, which I am undergoing between the Music and Theatre Studies departments at the University of Glasgow. The aim of the research is to investigate cross-discipline performance perspectives and how these may be reflected within my practice as a percussionist working within the 'theatrical' percussion repertoire, but also how these perspectives could influence general music performance and presentation also.

Throughout the 'monologue' of Le Corps a Corps, Aperghis depicts the retelling of a motorcycle crash. In my interpretation I wished to bring across the various accounts of the crash that are present in the work, those accounts being: The Motorcycle, The Commentator, The Crowd, and The Traumatised Rider that was involved in the crash. These aspects were all considered in the staging and lighting of this performance, and within the cuts of the recording too. The close-up shots acts as a focus to bring the audience in to the retelling of the event and aim to force the audience to focus in on the vivid and disturbing retelling of accounts in which the rider seems to relive in the moment. The wider shots and the opening of the space by the performer searching around aims to break the illusion of the intense world creation in the close-ups by extending that in reality the event is over, there is nothing to fear anymore. The introduction of the can aims to act as an ever present reminder of the event that the rider can't seem to shift until eventually at the end they reach and come to terms with the situation that is haunting them and embrace it rather than hide from it.