Kate Soper's "Ipsa Dixit" Premieres at Dixon Place

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 2, 2017, 10:12 a.m.

For six years, Kate Soper has been developing Ipsa Dixit ["She, herself, said it"]: an evening-length work that brings together her voice and instrumentalists of the Wet Ink Ensemble for an evening-length, staged work that explores the intersections between music, language, and meaning. Bringing together texts by Aristotle, Lydia Davis, Freud, and Plato, Ipsa Dixit addresses questions long avoided by philosophers and music theorists alike: is music a language? What, exactly, does it communicate? And who—body, voice, or instrument—is speaking?

Ipsa Dixit began when Soper realized that several of her works for voice and instruments—including Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say (2010-11) and cipher (2011)—shared several theoretical and musical correspondences, and ought to be developed into a single, multi-movement work. Through the past six years, Ipsa Dixit has developed into an evening-length work, with workshops and performances around the country, featuring Soper and Erin Lesser, Ian Antonio, and Josh Modney from Wet Ink. During a week-long residency at EMPAC in 2016, the piece developed into its final, fully-realized form, with the addition of director Ashley Tata, lighting designer Anshuman Bhatia, and projection artist Brad Peterson. 

Now, on February 3rd and 4th at Dixon Place, Ipsa Dixit is set to premiere in its most evolved form. (Dixon Place also saw the premeire of another of Soper's theatrical works, Here Be Sirens, in 2014.) If you're in New York, be sure to be there!