Two artists fly from two corners of the world to Vienna to unearth the mystery of the father of romantic music Beethoven’s lost ballet The Creatures of Prometheus. They are like marionettes pulled by the strings of Beethoven, always looking up to the sky to identify the invisible hands surrounding the series of coincidences which draw them together. In the city of music all artists are drawn to the fire of Prometheus, rising toward the sun, turning around the horizon in circles until man lies suspended between the spinning earth and the dizzy sky. In this fantastic exploration into romantic relationships the artists’ reality tends ever closer to magic realism as their stories merge in a climatic rhyming symphony.
In mythology and theology, the male and female once existed as a single essence, before their creator split them apart. They will only rest after rediscovering one another, to become one and whole again. The Flight of the Wooden Dancer explores the essence of romantic relationships, compared to the relation between the creator and his art, through natural and unnatural forms of life.
Is this a novel? Fiction or non-fiction? Fantasy or reality? In keeping with the subject matter, the book never conforms to a set definition, genre or category. There are two distinctive writing styles divided into odd and even numbered chapters. On the surface these forms represent the romantic and naturalistic approaches in art. Looking deeper within each story the form evolves and tends toward one another. The dialogues are captured in a neo-realistic manner with ambiguous characterization, while the perspectives of these worlds are constantly shifting and are open to interpretation.
The Flight of the Wooden Dancer is a musical in words. Music is the common language which binds these alternate realities. Initially the effect is most powerful by ‘hearing’ the music and subconsciously phasing out lyrics. After feeling the ‘music’, then similar to approaching poetry, with every successive read it is easier to unravel the inner meaning behind the words, discover multiple layers in the story and understand how this connects to the patterns throughout the book.