Music from Interdisciplinary Session 2

For our second Interdisciplinary (Sound) session we brought musicians in the studio as to explore the possibilities and limitations in music-dance collaborations and to explore the connections, differences and similarities in the practices of both dancers and musicians. We asked two professional musicians to come and improvise with us: Lidija Vujic played the flute and Mairi Skopeliti improvised on the cello (I played the piano). Through different tasks both musicians and dancers discovered new ways of listening to one another: dancers closed their eyes and allowed themselves to "listen" with different parts of their body (for example, they could feel the cello vibrating through the floor boards).

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.

24.2.2011 Interdisciplinary Collaborations 2 - Live-Sound-Body

Thoughts on the spot, thoughts on the go...

Space is full: musicians, dancers, recording equipment, flute, cello, piano. I can't help but note the spatial configurations: dancers on half the space on the floor, musicians in another half (towards a corner), recording equipment in corners but with some degree of mobility. Lefebvre would have something interesting to say about this.

More improvisation, trying to understand behavioral resonance, where the motion and sound coming from the musician affects what is perceived (in this case by the dancers) and how this affects their response to the improvised dialogue. After the first warm up-improvisation it is interesting to note that the dancers speak about the effect of sound in/on their bodies and the musicians speak of the effect of the dancers in 'their' space. The body the common element and also the (its?) difference.

There is much talk about space, not time

We move on to move the musicians (out of those corners), trying to establish a more open dialogue in space, not just through space. Dancers take 'time' coming in and out of dialogue with the musician.

From open improvisation to matters of structure, we begin to confront pre-existing dance material with the various musical/sound fragments/sets that Kiriakos has composed for today... It gets quite elaborate as the variables that can come into 'dialogue' with each other are suddenly 'exponientially' multiple

Arriving at complexity: dancers begin by listening into the silence, then begin to move, then musicians listen to dancers, then dancers listen to dancers whilst listening to musicians who are listening to dancers listening to dancers who are listening to musicians...

silence is always a probability...