At the Still Point of the Turning World, There the Dance Is

"At the Still Point of the Turning World, There the Dance Is" is a continuous span of about 20 minutes in many short, interlocking sections, which pass through or juxtapose a wide variety of musical climates and gestures. Some of these use the ensemble in quick, jagged antiphonal exchanges of blocks of instrumental colors; some come to rest in calm, meditative states evoking Indian classical music; some bring the ensemble together in rhythmic, dance-like unison melody. There are also passages in flowing, multilayered, gamelan-like textures, and toward the end the instruments break away completely, each playing ?out of time? with the others in a kind of mass cadenza, followed by a distillation of the central ideas of the whole work in an extended, slow unison melody for the entire group. The title reflects the presence within one another of both the outward, dance-like aspects and the inward, still center, all of whose musical materials are really manifestations of the same core ideas