The sixth edition of M.A.D. – Music & Dance, which took place on the 15th and 16th June 2025 at the Valletta Campus Theatre, presented an ambitious programme dedicated to exploring the collaborative possibilities between contemporary music and dance. This review of the first performance (on 15th June), a joint effort reflecting expertise in music and dance studies respectively, considers the successes and challenges of an evening that promised a dynamic fusion of live music and new choreography.
The overarching concept was centred on an unusual instrumental pairing: the cello and a wide array of percussion. The musical programme, featuring works by Ruben Zahra, Iannis Xenakis, Matthew Bartolomey, Giovanni Sollima, Louis Andriessen and Andy Akiho, tended to cohere around elemental rhythmic complexity and extended instrumental techniques. This musical challenge was met by new choreographies from the Maltese choreographer Francesca Abela Tranter and the Slovenian choreographer Jure Gostinčar.
A fundamental aspect that shaped the audience’s experience was the staging. The performance space, with its wings removed to create an expanded stage, featured a panoply of percussion instruments ranged along the back wall, while cellist, Silvia Gira, was also positioned towards the back but in a central placement. With the musicians at the back of the stage, a significant space was left at the forefront of the stage. This spatial arrangement presented an immediate dramaturgical question. While placing the instruments and musicians visibly in the performance space is crucial for an evening celebrating live music, the resulting distance between audience and musicians made it difficult to engage fully with the purely musical interludes. The void seemed to anticipate the entry of the dancers, creating a sense of waiting and expectation during the moments they were absent.
It was a surprising curatorial decision to commence an evening billed as ‘Music and Dance’ with an instrumental performance without choreography. The opening piece, Ruben Zahra’s Silk Road Suite (2002), with its driving, folk-inflected rhythms and irregular meters, certainly established the percussive and rhythmically complex character of the whole programme. Yet, in the absence of dance, one’s attention was drawn to the inherent choreography of the musicians’ performance. Gira was particularly captivating; the way her breath, body and cello moved as one became a form of dance in itself. Her expressive and gestural playing combined with a certain stage presence was a consistent strength throughout the evening.
The first choreographic work of the evening was set to Iannis Xenakis’s celebrated solo percussion piece, Rebonds B (1987–89). The French-language title translates as ‘bounce’, a quality reflected in the playful, energetic solos and duets performed by the six female dancers in Gostinčar’s choreography. Xenakis’s composition is a formidable study in rhythmic complexity, built upon a relentless semiquaver pulse against which irregular offbeats are set. The choreographer appeared to create a deliberate counterpoint to the rigour of the musical score. For much of the piece, the dancers’ movements existed in an asynchronous relationship with the percussive drive, only coalescing into a clear unison towards the work’s climax. There was also a palpable response to Xenakis’s interest in texture and density, with dancers clustering and dispersing in patterns that echoed the shifting sonic landscape. However, the conclusion to the piece felt somewhat anti-climactic. After building momentum, the dancers’ sequential exit by running offstage seemed to diffuse the energy, lacking the requisite force to conclude such a dynamically charged piece.
The evening’s central choreographic feature was Francesca Abela Tranter’s work set to Giovanni Sollima’s Terra (2001) for cello and audio track. Sollima’s work is divided into four elemental movements: ‘Aria’, ‘Aqua’, ‘Danza’ and ‘Fuoco’. Tranter’s response to ‘Aria’ was particularly effective, capturing the music’s flowing, waltz-like figuration with a beautiful sense of lightness. The dancers moved as a flock, using triplets across the stage, creating a wave-like airiness that was entirely symbiotic with the music’s soaring melodies. ‘Aqua’ was perhaps the least choreographically resolved section of the four, though it was musically compelling with its folk-like character and rich textural effects. It was here, however, that the lighting design felt intrusive, with moving lights that, while perhaps intended to evoke water, did not fully cohere with the movement. Conversely, ‘Danza’ was a masterclass in showcasing the individual strengths of the dancers, who came from diverse backgrounds. Through a series of playful and explosive solos and duets, Tranter allowed each performer’s unique quality of movement to shine without disrupting the piece’s overall structure.
The performance reached its zenith with the final section ‘Fuoco’. This, it can be argued, was the highlight of the entire evening, a moment where the integration of music and dance was absolute. To a beat-laden track, the dancers formed a tight cluster, their movement vocabulary focused almost exclusively on the use of the upper body, arms and hands. The intricate, repeating lexicon of digital and manual gestures was hypnotic. Executed with flawless synchronicity, the choreography drew the audience in. Here, music and dance were not merely juxtaposed; they were fused into a single, cohesive and mesmeric entity.
The programme’s dramaturgy became particularly apparent with the penultimate musical interlude, Louis Andriessen’s Woodpecker (1999). This clever piece for marimba and woodblocks functions as a witty dialogue between pitched and unpitched percussion, with the composer playfully exploring the interactions between these distinct wooden timbres. From a structural perspective, it served as an effective dramaturgical bridge to the finale. The introduction of the marimba, a new instrumental colour, signalled a transition and anticipated its central role in the final work of the evening.
This final piece was Andy Akiho’s 21 (2008), a work for cello, marimba and looper, choreographed by Gostinčar and featuring all seven dancers. The music presents a fascinating paradox: it is built on the minimalist exploration of a small number of notes (after J. S. Bach), yet it unfolds with extreme complexity. The layering of live and looped sound, combined with the cellist simultaneously playing a bass drum, created an almost overwhelming sonic complexity. Gostinčar’s choreography provided a powerful framework for this complex music, notable for its potent beginning and ending. The work commenced with a particularly striking choice: a solo dancer moving in complete silence before the music began. This was a profound statement on the creative interplay of presence and absence, suggesting that silence can possess musicality just as stillness contains movement. The work concluded with a crescendo of tension, both musical and physical. The dancers fused in a tangle of arms, which then expanded into a large, strained circle. This image of imminent breaking point was a fitting visual for the evening’s recurring themes of tension and rhythmic drive. As the music reached its powerful conclusion, the dancers released their hands, holding the final moment with a captivating stillness.
Throughout the programme, the musicianship was of a high calibre. The pieces are exceptionally demanding, and both performers navigated their complexities with skill. As noted, Gira’s performance on the cello was a standout, both musically and theatrically. One felt, however, that the performance of the percussionist, Rodolfo Rossi, while impressive in many ways, was less gesturally engaging than that of the cellist, creating a slight imbalance in the performer dynamics.
Reflecting on the evening as a whole, it was an artistically refreshing and important event for the local cultural landscape. Such interdisciplinary projects are vital and should be nurtured. However, the most salient point of critique concerns the overall balance between the two art forms. For an event entitled ‘M.A.D. – Music & Dance’, the curatorial framework appeared to weigh more heavily, in some ways, on the side of music. The musical interludes, while featuring interesting repertoire, created a structural imbalance that left one wanting a greater choreographic presence throughout the evening. To truly celebrate the collaboration, future editions might consider integrating dance more consistently across the programme, perhaps by commissioning choreographic responses to more, or all, of the musical works. Furthermore, providing more context, either in the programme or through a brief spoken introduction, would serve to properly frame the performance as the genuine partnership it aims to be.
In sum, the sixth edition of M.A.D. was a compelling and thought-provoking event, embracing the ‘challenge’ inherent in such an interdisciplinary project. While certain elements, particularly the staging and the realisation of some choreographic ideas, could be refined, the evening was a testament to the potential of such collaborations. In the final, fiery moments of ‘Terra’, the audience arguably gained a sense of what the M.A.D. project can, at its very best, achieve.
