Focusing on world famous toy piano virtuoso Margaret Leng Tan and her performance approach, termed ‘avant-garde pianism’, this chapter theorises theatrimusicality as a mode of virtuosic performance-making where musicking is inseparable from choreographic precision, vocality and scenographic design. In Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! Tan’s sonic mimicry of jingju percussion patterns on toy piano and other musical and sound-producing objects stages a politics of parody and citation; the vocal timbres and gestural excess foreground the need to ‘see’ music as the foundation of musical meaning. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! thus interrogates cultural soft power even as it affirms the operatic form’s inherent theatrimusicality. The next work, Curios, exemplifies how the mood and message of a performance can only be achieved theatrimusically. Curios is read as a theatrimusical carnival, where the phantasmagoric and grotesque are made possible because of the integral use of masks, gestural play and other non-musical objects made strange. The mise-en-scène invites spectaural attention to decode meaning relationally across sight and sound even as it inverts conventional recital decorum. Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep exemplifies what Derrida terms an otobiography. Through Tan’s virtuosic theatrimusicality that exploits the affordances of staging, scenography, lighting and movement, the work is a performance of hauntology in which memory, time and age become salient themes evoked through spectaural engagement. In Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep, Tan invites the signature of the audience as an acknowledgement of her life composed as a theatrimusical work.

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Theatrimusicality and Virtuosity: Ocular Auralities in the Works of Margaret Leng Tan

  • Marcus Cheng Chye Tan

摘要

Focusing on world famous toy piano virtuoso Margaret Leng Tan and her performance approach, termed ‘avant-garde pianism’, this chapter theorises theatrimusicality as a mode of virtuosic performance-making where musicking is inseparable from choreographic precision, vocality and scenographic design. In Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! Tan’s sonic mimicry of jingju percussion patterns on toy piano and other musical and sound-producing objects stages a politics of parody and citation; the vocal timbres and gestural excess foreground the need to ‘see’ music as the foundation of musical meaning. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! thus interrogates cultural soft power even as it affirms the operatic form’s inherent theatrimusicality. The next work, Curios, exemplifies how the mood and message of a performance can only be achieved theatrimusically. Curios is read as a theatrimusical carnival, where the phantasmagoric and grotesque are made possible because of the integral use of masks, gestural play and other non-musical objects made strange. The mise-en-scène invites spectaural attention to decode meaning relationally across sight and sound even as it inverts conventional recital decorum. Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep exemplifies what Derrida terms an otobiography. Through Tan’s virtuosic theatrimusicality that exploits the affordances of staging, scenography, lighting and movement, the work is a performance of hauntology in which memory, time and age become salient themes evoked through spectaural engagement. In Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep, Tan invites the signature of the audience as an acknowledgement of her life composed as a theatrimusical work.