Tuning to the Soul: An Inner Experience of Sound and Dance at the NAC
October, 2024 | Ottawa, ON
In recent weeks, my evening wind down has taken the form of sitting on my balcony, illumined by the moon and city lights, listening to classical music as loud as my headphones will allow. It’s probably not the best for my ears, but certainly stirs something in my soul. Music has become a thread connecting my academic research, spiritual practice, and personal painting. This convergence naturally drew me to explore the performances at the National Arts Centre (NAC).
My academic research has me immersed in the work of Wassily Kandinsky, particularly his Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and the theosophical text Thought-Forms. Both explore the idea that sound, thought, and emotion have visual counterparts in colour and shape—and that these can shift and expand consciousness. I’m also spending much of my time in the notebooks of Canadian painter Lawren Harris, studying how he viewed abstraction as a means to expand consciousness and align viewers with an inner, yet universal harmony. Harris was fascinated by the power of art to nourish the soul, and it was no surprise to find his thoughts on music intertwined with his remarks on painting. He often reflects on the role of the artist to touch something deep and timeless in themselves, and create works of art from that place which then have the capacity to bring the viewer or listener to a deeper place in themselves.
For example, in an undated essay on Abstract Art, Harris writes:
“When we listen to a great work of music such as a Beethoven symphony, we feel it to be individual yet universal. And though it takes less than an hour to perform, we feel its spirit to be timeless. No doubt Beethoven heard great and universal music with the inner ear. He then had to get it down on paper. That was the difficult task. He had to translate it from pervading, universal music into a particular expression, contain it in a particular form, so that an orchestra and a conductor, if rightly trained and attuned, could play it back again into the universal for us.”
Inspired by Harris' writings, attending a live orchestra felt like the next natural step toward understanding this interplay between sound, colour, feeling, and soul. On October 10, 2024, I found myself at the NAC, witnessing a performance by guest conductor Jessica Cottis and pianist Jonathan Biss accompanied by the NAC orchestra. They played Beethoven, Beamish, and Prokofiev, and in Harris’ language, the orchestra was without doubt “rightly trained and attuned.” I was completely mesmerized as the power of sound overcame concertmaster Yosuke Kawasaki to the point he could barely remain in his seat. Cottis’ hands moved with an explosive yet delicate guiding grace, and Biss' face trembled at the intensity with which he played the piano keys. The music seemed to reverberate through my entire being, as if something deeper and more timeless was unfolding in that Ottawa theatre at 9 PM.
National Arts Centre Orchestra
After the show, I mentioned to my friend, mesmerized by Cottis’ emotive conducting and recalling Kandinsky’s writings on the visual manifestation of sound, that I bet Cottis could see the music. The following day, upon discovering her social media page, I was pleasantly unsurprised to find a video of her discussing her experience with sound-to-colour synesthesia and the waves of colour and feeling that she sees in her mind’s eye with each section of the orchestra.
National Arts Centre, Ottawa
This only deepened my connection to the experience. The concert not only left me more attuned to a sense of harmony, the Spirit of Beauty—a term Harris uses interchangeably with ‘Universal Spirit’—but it also inspired me to return to the NAC the following week for a performance by Ballet BC, accompanied by the NAC orchestra. I wanted to witness how sound, which had moved me so deeply, could manifest more tangibly in the human body through dance. I spent most of my childhood taking dance classes, competing, and even played the violin and saxophone for short periods of time, more recently adding the harmonium to my list of instruments. But this particular exploration of sound and dance is rooted in the arts as gateway to a universal harmony.
Studying sound-to-colour in the studio.
As a painter, I often dance before approaching the canvas, allowing music to guide me into a state of presence and to experience different nuances of the musical energy. This overlapping of the arts is what Art Therapist Natalie Rogers calls “The Creative Connection.” Experiencing Ballet BC’s performance was like watching the inner movements of my mind's eye, and a piece of my personal practice taking shape in the physical world. It was probably the most moving art piece I have ever seen. The dancers, the orchestra, the space between them—it all became an embodiment of sound and spirit, moving as one. I overheard someone say after the dance show, “The expansion and contraction of the dancers moved something in me,” and I felt the same. It wasn’t just a performance; it was tuning us all to an inner harmony.
All true works of arts— in music, dance, painting— feel like different rivers flowing toward the same sea: the sea of the heart, the sea of the soul. When this happens, there is no longer such a clear distinction between viewer and performer, there is just the experience of Beauty. And when we immerse ourselves in these forms of beauty, it transforms us. It shifts our consciousness, widening our perspectives and awakening us to a deeper harmony that, though perceived through the senses, resides within. It is the harmony I feel on some level out on my balcony—the sense of something timeless and eternal, vast and ungraspable, yet intimately known in that simple moment. The NAC shows are not something to miss, and it’s been my experience that the best way to approach them is with an open and available heart, a willingness to expand. The music and dance are incredibly beautiful, but what is important and evident to notice is that the beauty felt is always an internal experience, a brushing up against the beauty of the Soul, through art.
$15 Under 30 tickets can be found here: https://nac-cna.ca/en/tickets/under30
Regular tickets can be found here: https://nac-cna.ca/en/
