Chamber Music

In 2005 ODC Dance, San Francisco’s premiere modern dance company, approached Jack about a new score for their 2005 -2006 home and touring season. Jack proposed a piece about human inattention to global warming, using the mythological Cassandra as central character. “On a Train Heading South” was the result, a postmodern excursion that blends pop references (including an extended tonality parody of Britney Spear’s Toxic), social dance forms such as pavanne and passacaglia, hip hop, serial, minimal and avant garde extended techniques, found media fragments and sound effects. The stage set features an arc of twelve blocks of ice suspended over a silver floor. The ice blocks melt throughout the performance – an aural and visual component of the half hour piece. “On a Train Heading South” received extensive media coverage, including a featured interview on NPR’s Living On Earth, and high praise in the San Francisco press. The San Francisco Chronicle referred to “…Jack Perla’s magical score, an amalgam of instruments and sampled tunes and voices, musical and political.”