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 The Trembling Soldier

From the Series “With Babies”

1. Q: Do you work with pieces by contemporary composers?

A: Yes, we do. Children love them, for example Steve Reich’s composition, “Music for 18 Instruments”. We chose an excerpt of about 2 minutes. Orsi was truly fascinated, she did not join the group but was dancing solo.

2. Q: Why do you think some of your children who have already got used to dancing with partners prefer sometimes to dance alone?

A: They often danced solo when they had important messages, sometimes with eyes closed, but always in a “trance”, as if they did not see the hustle and bustle of reality around them.

3. Q: The group, the others, the hustle and bustle did not disturb them?

A: Not at all, that was amazing for me, too. They were concentrating so hard that they did not even pay attention to other children jumping over their heads.

4. Q: How did they prepare for their scenes?

A: In the advanced groups I did not have to help them concentrate, we simply played the music, several times. The members of the group listened to it from different places in the room. Some were lying on their backs or on their stomachs, or sitting, in various positions, in complete silence and attentively absorbed.

5. Q: And you never had to tell them to keep silent or behave themselves?

A: Working with an advanced group meant that they had been attending my course for at least two years. We got to know one another and they learnt why it is worth keeping silent while listening to music. Not because of me, because of the musical experience.

6. Q: Is it any different with beginners?

A: Naturally it is. At first I have to do “magic tricks”, like stop the music after playing it once or twice, tell them something, do or show something, or cuddle up with them whispering. In the beginning, I have to do all sorts of things to keep them silent while the music is played. As well, the music is short, barely a minute long.

7. Q: Can you really precondition silence?

A: I can, indeed, through their behaviour. These are little children, four-year-olds and even younger ones, they are running around shouting happily, rushing to and fro, the joy they derive from their voices goes together with the joy of their movements.

8. Q: How do they learn to keep silent?

A: Through experience. We show them, again and again, that it is impossible to hear music in noise. We put on live presentations: we lie on our stomachs to listen, or I run around making noise to show them what it is like. There are many ways of doing it. At some point they will find out, the penny will drop: look, she’s right, we can hear better in silence.

9. Q: What if there is a very noisy child who will not fall silent? Or there are no such children?

A: To be sure there are! Learning how to behave varies from person to person. In these cases, I take the restless child on my lap, I try to calm him or her directly, through my bodily warmth. After classes we talk to each other in private, and I may find out what troubles him or her. In one case, for example, I could only come to terms with a child during a trip, in the forest, walking hand in hand. In another case it turned out by chance that the child was naughty only in the presence of her mother: once he was left alone and became a little angel full of attention.

10. Q: What solution did you find to this problem? Did you tell her mother not to come?

A: No, I would never do such a thing, the mother is more important than everything else. I talked to her and it became clear that there were problems at home. She was a smart woman, and I could help her, on the next occasion we showed her her clever son who became the model of attention for the other children. We were lying on the floor, listening to the steps of a fairy. The mother was lying with us, too, listening, she was enjoying it.

11. Q: So you do have pedagogical processes going on during the course of your classes?

A: There are many pedagogical processes, struggles and solutions, and even failures. There are parents who get bored, give up, or get offended, and go elsewhere and I never see them again. There are also children, in state care, who are adopted by families.

12. Q: Is it difficult to lose your students?

A: I cry for them and I dream about them but I am not their parent. I am but their teacher. That is different.

13. Q: Are you expecting them to be grateful?

A: No. Never. I hope for results, and if I don’t receive them, I look for the causes, in myself. What should I do differently? Where did I go wrong?

14. Q: Do you find out your own mistakes?

A: Sometimes I do, other times I don’t. That is very disappointing. Then a gate opens, light comes in and I see a trembling soldier who shows me the way. He shows it trembling, because he has found out a world of flower-men where he was born a tulip and his mates were daisies and lilies with petals for their hair. And the soldier could only tremble at first, then he calmed and everybody was admiring him. I remember when Orsi danced the trembling soldier. One of our Norwegian girl guests who attended for the first time, started to cry seeing Orsi’s dance and later she wrote to us from Norway about her experience.

15. Q: Did your guests understand your methods?

A: A surprising number of them understood, they asked questions, they took notes, others asked to come back and some invited me to work with them. Of course some of them could not make head or tail of our liberal style and were not happy about letting the child lie under the table doing nothing throughout the whole class. The school inspectors were especially annoyed by such things.

16. Q: Why weren’t you?

A: Because I knew the child and I could understand why he chose to lie there. Sometimes I lie by him and we whisper or dance a bit, or I may just give him a wink, since we understand each other. I don’t need spectacular things. He, too, may produce a trembling soldier, or realize that his hair is made of daisy petals, and fly to our music. 

Trembling Soldier

21 January 1988 Resedas

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Instruments

excerpt

Orsi is sitting alone, she doesn’t join a group today. She is clearly captivated by the music, lying with eyes closed, holding out her hands far, she is receiving the music with every limb, like a flower drinking sunshine. Marci – running around – leaps over her and looks back apologetically, but Orsi did not even notice him. 

Music is played some five times before she starts to dance, alone, not looking at anybody, not even me. She makes her arms tremble, and then at the first sounding of the gong she bends her knees. As the gong sounds become more frequent she sits down and puts something in her mouth to the procession of the beat. She then stands up, and with trembling hands kept close to her body walks on tiptoe. She walks on and on, then she crouches, even her ponytails tremble, her eyes blink to the rhythm. Her trembling slowly diminishes, she blends into music, getting completely absorbed. She is listening inwardly, imagination almost shines through her skin, the whole child brightens up, her hair is scintillating. 

All around parents and guests are watching her with amazement, a fair-haired Norwegian girl is on the verge of crying. Orsi is breathing in music, her hands are raised by the rhythm, she is circling them around forcefully, sending her message towards greater vistas. As the music fades she gradually becomes quiet, her legs bend, she sits down and looks, stares in front of herself. It takes awhile for me to approach her with the tape-recorder. Orsi, will you tell us your tale?

Orsi: I was a trembling soldier who was constantly trembling, while he was walking, drinking or eating. I was born of a tulip. The tulip’s head was my head, and I was constantly trembling, even when I was eating. Then one day I woke up, and found that I didn’t tremble so much, and started to walk more and more smoothly. Then I was walking really smoothly, I could walk properly. I was happy that I could walk properly, and nobody is mocking me because of my trembling. Then everybody was amazed in the street that the trembling soldier could become so calm. At the end, something pulled me back towards the earth and I went back to become a flower. And everybody was born a flower and after one year they all became flowers again.

Klara: In the country where you were living?

Orsi: Yes. It was the country of flower-men. Even our hair was fluttering and trembling. The petals of the tulips and the daisies were our hair, because not everybody was born of tulips.

K: What were the others born of?

Orsi: Some of them were born of daisies, others of lilies. 

K: When you changed back, did you became a tulip again?

Orsi: Yes, and I had my favourite colour.