Chiasm
1–2 May 1999
Operatic performance, Handball Alleys, St. Enda’s School, Salthill, Galway
Commissioned as part of the Project Arts Centre Off-Site Programme
Filming at Poll na bPéist, Inis Mór, Galway
Set up at Handball Alleys, St. Enda’s School, Galway
There is a sea pool on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland that is a perfect rectangle. It looks like it was cut by man. The pool is fed underground by the ocean; it rises and falls with the tides and the weather. The pool is called Poll na bPeist or the Worm’s Hole.
Many derelict handball alleys stand around the countryside like modernist sculptures; beautiful empty cast concrete arenas.
An exquisite architectural ‘quartet’ of alleys, exists on the grounds of a school in Galway. The geometry of the pool mirrored that of the alley floor. Footage of Poll na bPeist was projected from 80 foot towers down into the alleys as if attempting to fit the sea pool into the rectangle of the floor space.
A soprano in one alley and a tenor in the other began singing disconnected phrases from several operas. Small fragments depicting extreme love and extreme loss were strung together - words sung in German, French, English, Russian and Italian. The audience stood on a scaffold platform looking down into the alleys; they could never see both alleys at the same time, their view was always limited. The singers occasionally fell into a duet but then returned to fragmented pieces. They sang without orchestration, their voices divorced from the support of instruments. Moving across the floors of the alleys separated by a 30 foot wall, they walked unchoreographed on the projected images of the Worm’s Hole swirling and surging below their feet. There was a possibility they could arrive at a point in the central wall, in line with each other, but they never did.
Eugene Ginty – Tenor
Carol Smith – Soprano