Carmine

For Dancers, Voice and Electronics – audio track

Composed and mixed by Gabrielle Dalsan

Premiered at The Wallace Collection - 2024

‘Carmine’ is a piece for voice and electronics written for a collaboration with dancers from the English National Ballet School for a performance at The Wallace Collection. Carmine is an expression of the frustration felt by women throughout major initiatory stages in womanhood. These include the menstrual cycle and childbirth, menopause, and the suppression of our natural hormonal rhythms and monthly cycle of women, through the rigidity of modern life that is suited for the 24 - hour hormonal cycle of men. Carmine itself is the name of a deep tone of red that resembles the bloodshed of menstruation, childbirth, abortion and miscarriage - but also the red-hot fury felt by so many women across the centuries.

The multiple voices were performed and recorded by myself, reflecting the inner dialogues I experience that would be deemed taboo in many environments. The voices, despite the crescendo, are kept relatively quiet and subdued. They hit a ceiling, as it were. I wanted the piece to sound introverted, as if these voices are loud yet stuck inside the container of my body - not quite reaching the external world, as they do in ‘Rapture’. The voices also hark to the thread of community built by women through who share the same experiences, in sisterhood, women’s circles and midwifery. I collaborated with dancers who interpreted the work as a group. The choreography resembled ‘Ecstatic Dance’ and ritualistic movements, similar to May Pole Dance and Pagan tradition. Working with these dancers was an incredible experience and I plan to continue the collaboration in the future.

(Please see the Ballet video within the portfolio to accompany the track)