One of the tasks we did was asking the dancers to move in a sound-scape the musicians were creating. The musical ensemble had a small score I had already composed that wasn't really set or "closed". The musicians had fragments of musical notation that they had to mix-up and perform as they liked, depending on the conditions of the movement, the atmosphere, the other musician's playing and so on; thus we performed a structured improvisation to which the dancers had to respond with movement. I encouraged the dancers to close their eyes while moving, as to experience the sonorous aspect of the "event" more intensely. In the following recording you can hear part of the ensemble's improvisation, as well as other sounds from the studio, produced by the dancers' movement. It was interesting to see that the "non-musical" sounds in the studio complemented the "musical" sounds, and even picked up the rhythms and mood of what the musicians were playing.
Then Ana proposed that we did another improvisation, but this time it shouldn't be structured. The only rule was that the dancers should follow what the musicians were doing. In other words, the musicians were creating a sonorous presence to which the dancers had to "plug into" and respond to.
In the last part of our session, we decided to do a task that would involve a structured improvisation by both parts, both dancers and musicians. Dancers were asked to bring into the "event" material that they had already set and created, while musicians were using their composed notation fragments. In the end, the musicians stopped playing but the dancers continued moving until the momentum of the "event" came to silence. You can listen to them moving (their "body music") in this next recording.
