BalletX and Dan Deacon team up to reimagine Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’

Dan Deacon is known for many things: his orchestral electronic music, live shows with heavy crowd participation, the viral “Drinking Out of Cups” audio piece and accompanying video, and providing scores to films and TV shows, including the suburban Philly-set HBO series “Task.”

Another facet of the Baltimore-by-way-of-Long Island musician is his composing music for ballet. He and Philly’s modern dance company BalletX are teaming up again for two performances where Deacon’s music will serve as the score “The Four Seasons Reimagined.”

Two performances are scheduled for Thursday — which will mark the show’s world premiere — and Friday as part of BalletX’s Festival at Highmark Mann. Get your tickets online here.

 ”I started to think about the earth, my relationship with the earth, how much I love nature, and how I love the changing of the seasons,” BalletX Co-Founder Christine Cox told WXPN when discussing the project’s inception. “And I actually love [Antonio Vivaldi’s] ‘The Four Seasons.’ It’s always been so inspiring to me.”

As Cox, who also serves as the company’s artistic and executive director, began to develop the project, she thought of Deacon, who BalletX worked with in 2023.

 ”We collaborated with Dan on a project that was choreographed by Justin Peck, and we brought Dan to The Mann a few years ago,” she said. “It was epic.”

When she pitched reimagining the iconic 1775 suite to Deacon, he was somewhat hesitant at first.

“ She brought up this idea of the four seasons, and I didn’t think she meant Vivaldi,” he said. “I just thought she meant four choreographers each doing a representation of a season.”

Deacon admits he’s not the biggest Vivaldi fan, but Cox’s passion led him to agree to score the ambitious project. Yet he was a bit unsure how to approach the music.

He toyed with remixing the four pieces, but then realized logistically it wasn’t feasible.

 ”As I started setting some rules for myself, and one was I didn’t want to write a single note; I wanted to do everything by processing the existing note information that Vivaldi gave by taking the score and running it through MIDI filters and custom software and existing software,” he said. “And very quickly, that became a very, very fun process. It spoke to my desire to be experimenting, because I didn’t know what the outcomes were going to be.”

The final product, which will be revealed Thursday night, is the result of Deacon sort of reverse engineering the score. He started with a piano reduction, and then blew it up, and orchestrated it from there.

“And that’s when it really took shape,” he said. “I’m more writing for a mood. I didn’t think about choreography at all. I just thought I’m making a piece of music, then I’m going to send it to my collaborators, and they’re going to help figure out how the music can best suit a non-existent choreography.”

With all four seasons’ pieces ready for the stage, BalletX dancers have been intensely rehearsing their parts.

The physical aspect of the performances come from choreographers Morgann Runacre-Temple (Summer), Penny Saunders (Fall), Jamar Roberts (Winter), and Trey McIntyre (Spring).

 ”Each choreographer builds a relationship with the composition,” Cox said.  ”How are they going to move our dancers? What signals them? What inspirations from their relationship to nature do they bring? It’s a really simple concept, but it’s complicated in that every individual is really different.”

Cox said the music has an intensity that the choreographers are trying to match, which means the company has to exert an extreme amount of physical and mental energy to bring the movements to the stage.

 ” Approaching a project like this really involves intentional mental and physical awareness,” she said. Deacon described his compositions for the project as dense and complex.

Cox hopes the crowds see the project for what it is: a love letter to mother nature.

“ I want them to feel love,” she said. “I want them to feel hope and a sense of ‘what does it all really mean?'”

Deacon likened his role in the project to baking.

 ”The same way that if I was a farmer and made eggs, and a baker bought my eggs to make a cake, I don’t want people biting into the cake and being like, ‘oh, I can really taste the eggs,'” he said.  Rather than the crowd leaving thinking the music was great, he wants them to appreciate the entire performance: music, choreography, set design, and costuming as one.  ”When you go to a Dan Deacon show, you tend to be standing in a crowd, and there’s huge levels of sound and flashing lights, and hopefully the audience is the majority of the focal point for the show. At a ballet, it’s a culmination of all of these different crafts.”

 ”We’ve commissioned over 150 world premieres, so it’s not my first rodeo, but it is definitely my first time leading this creative process where I’ve curated the world that we’re stepping into,” Cox said.

And Cox, Deacon, the choreographers, dancers, and Deacon’s Barbara Jeeps Ensemble (comprised of James Young, Sarah Manley, Patrick McMinn, and Peter Kibbe with a punny name referring to local auto dealer Gary Barbera) will see it all come together just two days before the premiere.

“ I’m eager to see what the differences will be between night one and night two,” Deacon said.

Additionally, each night will feature pre-show performances, Cox said. BalletX has invited  10 performing arts schools and dance schools to perform in the Mann’s tent before the shows. Attendees can also bring picnics to enjoy while taking in the performances. Free parking is included with tickets, as well.