A COCKROACH’S TARANTELLA (2010)
For Narrator & String Quartet
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CONTENTS About this Cockroach
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English ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Chinese ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Performing Notes
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Text
7 English ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7 Chinese ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 14
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Score
1. I have been pregnant 我怀孕很久了 …………………………………………………………. 20 2. I am bored 挺闷的 ………………………………………………………………………………….. 24 3. Piety in motion 虔诚地 ………………………………………………………………………………. 26 4. Shhiullumizh“什鲁木之” ………………………………………………………………………. 31 5. Next life
来生吧……………………………………………………………………………………….33
6. Our village 咱村 …………………………………………………………………………………………42 7. The right number 吉数 ……………………………………………………………………………….43 8. The impossible 不可思议 …………………………………………………………………………… 44 9. Muilliska “牡以列斯卡“ …………………………………………………………………………… 47 10. Ocean 海 ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 49
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DURATION: ca. 19’ Commissioned by the Chamber Music America
Story by Du Yun (2005) Chinese version of the story written in 2019 In 2004, I wrote my first chamber opera, Zolle, which was a story on the afterlife. As I was finishing Zolle, I fabricated another piece that would serve as a life-before fable. At this time, I was living in a government subsidized student apartment. When I would take breaks from my work, particularly in the early hours, I would talk to the many cockroaches that shared my residence. A Cockroach’s Tarantella was meant to score for a string quartet and a narrator as a stand-alone piece at a later time as well as a prelude to Zolle. Both stories are steeped in humankind's ubiquitous fascination with regression, the conflict of belonging and alienation, and the resurrection archetype.
SOME SCIENTIFIC FACTS! The female cockroach species mate once in their lives, and then continue to produce ootheca, or egg cases, of thirty to forty eggs at two to three day intervals under temperature of 20 degrees Centigrade. The average cockroach lifespan is 6 months to a year. Female cockroaches can reproduce for years without needing a mate, producing dozens of generations of all-female descendants, a team of scientists has found. Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction, allowing young insects to spawn from unfertilized eggs. -- Du Yun (2010)
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由美国室内乐基金会委约
《跳塔郎泰拉舞的某蟑螂》
2004 年， 我写完我第一部室内歌剧，Zolle，那是一部有关来生的故事， 自己编的文字。 在即将写完之前，另一部有关前世的故事在耳朵里逐渐形成。这部前 生的幻事, 就是这 《跳塔郎泰拉舞的某蟑螂》，我听到的是弦乐四重奏和一个叙说者，作品可以单独成立，也可以作为室内歌剧 Zolle 的前幕。 两首主人公的 命运毫不相关却相辅相成，当时我对人类蜕化的记忆，溯源和我们不断追寻所谓向上，崇高然而却周而复始的现象挺感兴趣。
据悉科普：有种母性蟑螂类一生中只交配一次，继而不断产卵囊，在 20 摄氏度左右每两到三天产卵 30 到 40 颗不等。如果用人类的时间来推算，普通蟑螂的生命 期大约六月到一年。蟑螂的繁殖是有性繁殖与无性繁殖相结合。 一只雌蟑螂一年可繁殖近万只后代，最多可达十万只，在极端条件下没有雄蟑螂时，雌蟑螂也能 产卵。 也就是说，很多雌蟑螂交配一次以后，就会雌雄同体，不需交配，便可连续产卵。 关于塔郎泰拉舞的起源：相传 14 世纪中叶，意大利南部城市塔兰托城一带出现一种奇怪的传染病，是由名为塔兰图拉的毒蜘蛛咬伤所致。受伤者只有疯狂地跳 舞，直至全身大汗淋漓，才能排出体内毒素。塔兰泰拉之名因此而得。
（故事英文版 2005 完成，中文版写于 2019 年。）
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First Performance: iO Quartet Erik Carlson, Joshua Modney， violins; Elizabeth Weisser, viola; Christopher Gross, Violoncello; Du Yun, narrator Symphony Space, New York City, February 2010
World Premiere Recording by Du Yun and JACK Quartet Released on Aug 13, 2020 Modern Sky C001
The English version of the text was written in 2005, the Chinese translation of the text by the author was written in 2019.
Please note the work should be played without stop.
A Cockroach’s Tarantella 1.
I have been pregnant
Story by: DU YUN
I have been pregnant for as long as I could remember. Everywhere I go and hunt for food for myself and my blimey-knows-howmany-kids-up-to-date-and-forever, I have to carry this obscene belly around. I do not, however, remember the last time I used my scent to attract my husband. It has been too long. Because theologically, (well theologically), you see, we don’t need to mate that often … Uhmmm, it’s not … it’s not required by the law.
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I am bored I am bored with this life. I am a traitor. As far as my knowledge goes, I am the only one who doesn’t want to be one of us. My biggest wish is to be our enemy, the human. They seem to have a good life. You see, for what I have heard, they say most of the human women are pregnant out of love. I am bored with this life. We don’t love each other; we are not social; we don’t support each other; we are just… we are just living, collectively, together.
I already told you that my biggest wish is to be a human. To achieve that, I am very religious. I believe in both God and Buddha. I believe the Buddha lives within me, and God with me. Men say believing in Buddha can upgrade one being to another better form of life, while believing in God, you get to go to heaven. To me, being human is pretty much heaven. I do not want to be an angel. I already have wings, which are not particularly useful to escape from my destiny to be killed by the human. And I, highly dubious about whether one can transcend directly from a cockroach into an angel.
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Piety in motion Every morning when I go to sleep, I pray to both God and Buddha that in four months I will turn into a human. I want to love someone. I want to be loved. I want to live in a community where people ---- huh, please please let me be one of them --- love each other, need each other and, well, are not easily being killed by humans. I’m sure they don’t have enemies themselves. What would be wiser than a human? I have heard that humans are the wisest thing among all the living forms. And because we are not wise you see, we are killed by the humans. Destiny is destiny; history is history. Our destiny is to be killed and yet our history has been a particularly long one. Three hundred and fifty million bloody years. We don’t even suffer from the nuclear bombs. Bloody three hundred and fifty million years! Can you imagine that? Our enemy, the human, has existed for only about four million years. Alright alright, give them five, tops, considering they kept re-creating their origins. And yet the battle between us has exited as long as we, cockroaches, have existed. 8
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Shhiullumizh When I was giving my fourth delivery of last year of my thirty-eight babies, there was a lot of ‘shhiulumizh’ coming out of me. More so than during any of my previous delivery experiences. In our dialect, the blood is called shhiulumizh. Shhiulumizh is whiteyellow. Our body fluids are pretty screwed up. Oh I forget to tell you that we cockroaches don’t even have tears. You know we always hear those stories and anecdotes from the enemy, about how they cry and cry for things ridiculous to cry over. The fable is that the humans would cry over a lost one.
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Next life The last time I led my children to flee from an accustomed-to extermination, twenty of my children did not make it. I myself was too much in a hurry to escape so I ran without even turning back my head. But later that night I went back, wanting to cry and waiting to be sorrowful and all - for you know how much I would like to be a human - but the grief did not happen. The weep did not come. Next life, next life when I am a human, I will feel the sorrow and the tears. How amazing it is to lament, just as a human would. It was in my Nymph years when maman found me the husband. I was not ready then. I was not capable of understanding love. I was only a nymph. You cannot tell differences between an adult cockroach and a nymph cockroach, considering we only differ in 9
size. And I happened to be a very big nymph. Maman told me: “Uodfy silly girl, you are thinking too much. We only use them once to get us pregnant. For the rest of life, we don’t need them.” So, I did. But now you see, I am the one who has to be stuck with this obscene belly throughout the rest of my life. And gee, now I don’t even remember what my husband smells like. Next life, next life when I am a human, I will understand about love and I will do the love right; I will also age properly, gracefully, just as a human would.
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Our village About my traitorous behaviour, maman was severely concerned. She took me to the prophet in our village. By the way, the landscape of our village is an odd shape, somewhere square somewhere rectangle some up-hills more down-hills and all that. And there is even a lake that we are told not to go in. Last time a nymph went in, and she was pulled into a big swirl all of sudden, while she was just innocently doing some lap-swimming. Huge sound. Like those from a seashore. Well, I only read about the sea in the human world. How much bigger can it be than our village lake? The oldest cockroach, the prophet Muilliska, told us that our lake is linked to a metal tunnel and possibly to the ocean. Every night when the light goes out, I hang on to the edge of the lakeshore and fantasize going in. But the bigger problem is the torrent does not occur until the light is on, with a human approaching…
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The right number Anyways, I was telling you that I was once taken by my maman to the prophet to meditate upon my previous life. According to Muilliska, I have been a cockroach for ten hundred and thirty-eight THOUSAND cycles of lives! To this, maman happily announced: “see daughter, you are not meant to become a human. You have already failed ten hundred and thirty-eighth THOUSAND times.” Well then, okay then. Yes I have failed. But you see this time, I have a good number: you see I have already given birth to one hundred thirty-eight nymphs… one hundred thirty-eight… maybe ten hundred thirty-eighth is THE right number! It’s a calling. I shall succeed the very next time.
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The impossible My first delivery of this year was an impossible one. It was failing me. Maman ran out to fetch Muilliska. The prophet came to my bedside. She held my Loufo, my upper limb, and sang the usual ritual, danced the usual dance. I wanted to beg her not to. But I was too weak to protest being reborn into yet another cockroach life the ten hundred-ninth time. My shhiulumizh flowed, even more than my last time in the fourth delivery of last year. Although something felt different. Muilliska stopped her singing to stare at my shhiulumizh.
She looked into my eyes. In an excited tone, mixed with much awkward awe and fear, “Girl,” she said, “your
shhiulumizh is RED?” I was too weak to decipher any syllables by then. She went on: “Uodfy, poor thing, who has to go with her many unborn nymphs. Uodfy, you have three more minutes in this life. Are you sure, are you so certain, that you want to be a human in the next life?” Are you sure? Yes, I am bloody sure. BLOODY, can’t you see that? Yet still no sound coming out of me. 11
I felt myself starting to go then. More shhiulumizh came out. Still RED.
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Muilliska I could not believe Muilliska was still speaking, as though she has to speak if she is not singing. And yet, she continued: “You know, I am the oldest one in our village. But it is a secret that I am actually three hundred and ninety-eight years old. Uodfy, I am not going to sing our ritual for you. Here is something different. Maybe you will succeed in turning into a human. Uodfy, you think you are the only one who wants to be a human? No Uodfy, count me in. In this life alone, I have tried so many times that I cannot remember. I have only learned how not to die, and still I keep trying. But the Shhiulumizh has to be red, they say. Uodfy, you are the only one I have seen with RED shhiiulumizh! Uodfy, if you ever become a human, would you come back to our village, and find me and tell me what is it like to be a human? What is it like to have fewer than 10 nymphs in your entire life? And what is it like to be pregnant out of many loves? And please, please tell the other humans not to kill all of us.” “Uodfy, we will miss you…” “Uodfy, good luck.
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10. Ocean On that note, I smiled. I can already see my tears pouring out like a river, a river will, eventually, flow into the ocean; I can already feel what it feels like to love and to be properly loved … and not, and not to have the fear to be killed.
Off I go.
__ THE END
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