What does twerking have to do with Antonín Dvořák’s compositions? Absolutely nothing.
But put the two together and, voila, you’ve got an exploitative marketing plan to get a pop- and rock-loving public to hopefully sit up and take notice of a classical music festival.
In this advertising gimmick, B-Classic, a Belgian classical music festival that leverages the power of classical music to engage new audiences, attempts to fuse tripartite differences – Asian K-pop, twerking asses and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E-Minor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvjZYep6Iw#t=282
Flemish director Raf Reyntjens was tasked with pulling off this bag of strings and ass for B-Classic and decided to employ the twerking sensibilities of South Korean girl group, Waveya.
The idea behind this odd combination is to help classical music make a comeback as strong as LL Cool J’s. To do so, the production team targeted an audience brought up on music videos, then combined the social following prowess of a K-pop band like Waveya and meshed the two together.
“This made us look for the clichés used today in music videos, and we arrived at twerking,” says Geert De Wachter, the producer for the music video.
The crew discovered Waveya and decided to roll with the Asian persuasion because “Asia represents the new world” for them, just as America did when Dvořák wrote his New World symphony 100 years ago.
The video and the execution didn’t really make sense while we were banging whisky shots and snorting vodka the night before, but now that we’re somewhat sobre and watching the video for a second time, it still doesn’t make much sense.
So we asked classical guitarist and musically trained writer, Ivan Lim, for his take on the video.
“The first time I listened without looking at the visuals then wondered where the rest of the symphony was. Then I saw the girls. Very nice idea,” said Ivan.
“I watched it again and it took nothing away from the music. The focus was obviously on the rhythm, which is an important aspect of music, of course. I was slightly annoyed that the posteriors were sometimes out of synch, which was disappointing.
“I think it would give classical music more attention, but at the end of the day, education is more important than stimulation.”
Watch for yourself and decide.
