Black Madrigal

“Mao's dancers show the whole set of steps in the first two minutes. From then on, the visual interest in the piece comes from both the dancers being out of sync with identical movements, or slightly varied movements that occur simultaneously. Like much of abstract modernism, whatever narrative the piece acquires is entirely the imposition of the viewer. All of this, of course, comes from the foundation of Mao's world-view that everyone is made up of bits and pieces of the totality of one's experience. This, in particular, is a point he makes subtly, but emphatically, with his international cast of six dancers who come from six different cultures around the world.”                                                                                                                               Knoxville News  Sentinel

“The program's major piece, "Black Madrigal," was, in fact, set to the phase-shifting music of Mauricio Kagel, who studied with Stockhausen. The polyphonic structure of the traditional form of the madrigal could be heard in the spoken and sung text of the music, the lyrics of which consist entirely of multiple uses of the names of African towns, accompanied by instrumental sounds that have similar organizations. Instead of the dance being a direct mimicking of the emotional and rhythmic patterns of the music, its primary relationship to the score was through visually interpreted polyphonism, or movement patterns that are like phase-shifted fraternal sextuplets instead of the unison of genetically identical siblings. Like the music of Stockhausen, or American composer Terry Riley's landmark "In C," which states a brief set of musical material, then invents on it through pattern-shifting that creates endless, imaginative complexity.”     

Knoxville News Sentinel