The Long Parade - De Panne

In a line of people, someone whispers a message into the ear of the next person. He or she then whispers the message to the next one, until finally the end of the line is reached. The last participant pronounces the message out loud - and hilarity or confusion ensues, because the final result has invariably been totally deformed by a series of misunderstandings along the chain. This game – something named "telephone call" in Belgium and (more evocatively) "Chinese Whispers" in Great Britain - inspired composer and conductor Ari Benjamin Meyers to create a new composition along the Belgian coastline.

In collaboration with the walking orchestra ´Die Verdammte Spielerei´, Meyers is composing an original piece for Beaufort. With the piece, the orchestra will be marching through all of the ten Belgian coastal towns. At each "border" an exchange will take place, as an open rehearsal, where the musical piece is passed on. It all kicks off in De Panne, where for two weeks a local group of musicians worked on transforming the piece into a new composition. They perform their version while walking from their own town hall to that of the next town on the coastline: Koksijde. Spread over the summer of 2021, this process will repeat itself in each town during ten musical parades, until the work reaches its finale in Knokke-Heist.