Interdisciplinary dialogues via improvisational scores

Here are a few excerpts of a work I premiered with my company last year in New York entitled It Won't Buy You Lunch (thank you iMovie, apologies to film-folk).  It was a collaboration between my beautiful company dancers, musicians courtesy of the Open Music Ensemble, a filmmaker, visual artist, costume designer, inventor and lighting designer.  We had the most wonderful experience sharing ideas and working together in the studio throughout the process.  Each section with the exception of the first one, was generated using improvisational scores derived from exploration outdoors, in the studio and conversations about the relationship between artists and NYC spaces and artists across disciplines.  I am fascinated by the collaborative process and am excited to continue exploring it with new collaborators and new prompts.



There Might Be Others is an adaptation of Terry Riley's performer instructions for In C directed and choreographed by Rebecca Lazier in collaboration with composer Dan Trueman and all of the performers.  The dancers and musicians created movement and music modules independently and then worked together in the studio to develop their own set of performer instructions for the work as a whole.  Have patience as the piece develops, then once you have a sense of the big picture go back to the beginning and skip through to see how the music and movement motifs influence each other over time to ultimately culminate in a the creation of an exuberant coming together of music and dance.  (Note: while this video is an in-progress peek into a collaboration I adore, I am not seeking to recreate it in this class.)

I am excited to explore ways of being in dialogue with technology as a third component of a music and dance collaboration.  I am particularly intrigued by video elements that integrate motion capture technology and would love to investigate what might happen if you input both movement information and sound information into the same program and seek ways for them to interact that is actually within the same language (eg: visual output on a screen) and how participants can both create and respond to this new language at the same time.  The idea that elements of a work cannot exist without the others and still be the work is a value of mine.  I also enjoy bringing musicians into the performance space (what might happen if you use motion tracking technology on a cellist's bow... or from an entire orchestra playing live in another room??).