Sitting out the dance

Are you ready for a duo who won't move from their chairs for your entertainment?

Would you like to watch two middle-aged men sitting in silence for 45 minutes while they move their arms, heads and bodies in a comical fashion? This is what the choreographer Jonathan Burrows and the composer Matteo Fargion have been doing in Both Sitting Duet since 2002, enthralling audiences around the world. So far they have performed it more than 50 times, in 17 different countries. Burrows, a former soloist with the Royal Ballet who formed the Jonathan Burrows Group in 1988 to present his own work, and Fargion last performed Both Sitting Duet at The Place, in London, in 2003.

Would you like to watch two middle-aged men sitting in silence for 45 minutes while they move their arms, heads and bodies in a comical fashion? This is what the choreographer Jonathan Burrows and the composer Matteo Fargion have been doing in Both Sitting Duet since 2002, enthralling audiences around the world. So far they have performed it more than 50 times, in 17 different countries. Burrows, a former soloist with the Royal Ballet who formed the Jonathan Burrows Group in 1988 to present his own work, and Fargion last performed Both Sitting Duet at The Place, in London, in 2003.

For Fargion, who has been writing music for Burrow's pieces for 15 years, being able to perform himself is a dream. "I like to get on stage and perform," he says. "It gets rather isolated for composers locked away at home, and that is why I enjoy collaborating, despite the fact that it can also drive composers absolutely insane."

When the two men, who have been close friends for 22 years, came to work on Both Sitting Duet three years ago, Fargion was armed with the score of Morton Feldman's "For John Cage". "It was a piece of music we had both been obsessed with for two years," says Fargion. "I thought it was the right material to put between us so we could work in a more equal way. We translated note for note this very long piece for violin and piano into movement - and then discarded it completely - so you don't hear the music when we perform the dance." Fargion's compositions usually have a "simple" quality to them, but here - with no music at all - "it leaves the audience open to hear their own melodies".

Fargion says that at first he was a little shy in performance, but both men have a fascination with the relationship between music and dance, and they gradually began to find their rhythm. "Feldman's music is very reductive, abstract, very quiet, but surprisingly we did not end up doing small hand gestures with intricate detail. It soon became clear that we were creating more of a jolly folk dance. We were not following the mood, but using the score as a map."

How is it performing with a trained dancer? "That is why we are sitting down - like two musicians," he says. "I started out performing more stiffly than Jonathan, who is more accurate rhythmically, but that is part of the charm of the piece."

The two performers attempt to find the counterpoint between music and dance within the piece. "I always like working with Burrows because he is interested in the intelligence behind the music, rather than the feeling," Fargion says. The seed for the work was sown in Hands (1995). "I composed the score for the hand movements that Jonathan gave me. Afterwards, I think we both felt there was unfinished business."

'Both Sitting Duet', Clore Studio, Upstairs at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000; www.royaloperahouse.org) 10-26 November