program note
I wrote undanceable in 2010, for cellist Joshua Roman and pianist Evelyne Luest, as a birthday present for my friend Aaron Kernis. I wanted to make something that Aaron would like, that would be birthday-appropriate, so I thought of writing dance music, in honor of his really enjoyable piece ‘100 Greatest Dance Hits.’
A strange paradox about dance music in a concert hall is that it has to be rhythmic enough to make you feel like dancing, but not so catchy you become frustrated that you can’t jump up out of your seat and dance down the aisles. My solution to this paradox was to write a kind of tango whose rhythms I then intentionally hobbled. This, I thought, would keep us in our seats. It’s original impulse comes from dance music, but it isn’t dance music any more.
