Closing thoughts

What an incredible experience.  In the beginning of the semester, I was excited to work with Performing Arts Technologists because I felt free to come up with wild ideas and they kept telling me "sure, that can be done."  They did magic and all I could see was the illusion.  I was lucky to be in my group as Sam, Spencer and I all agreed from the beginning that we would allow ourselves to throw all of our wild ideas into the pot, let them cook for a bit, and then pick out just the pieces we wanted to use to express something poetic.  We spent a lot of time paring away accoutrements and delving deeply into a meditative practice together, allowing rehearsals to be spaces for inquiry, being and discovery.  As we neared the last few weeks of class, we looked back over the work we had done to identify what we cared about, ultimately discovering the work was about our identities and memories as artists.  

In my attempt to step outside my comfort zone, I found myself stepping outside of dance for much of the process.  Our big breakthrough rehearsal happened when we set up our gear in a dance studio and tasked ourselves with creating a dance using the same rules that govern the Ableton launchpad: introduce a movement and choose to repeat it, cut it short, pause it, or make a new one, thus building a personal set of movement samples.  But truly bridging the the three disciplines took a contact microphone and a piece of plywood.  By amplifying and sampling the sounds I made naturally as I walked, slid and spun across the board, my body literally became an instrument whose output could be looped just like Spencer's French Horn.  I wouldn't have thought of this in the beginning of the semester as it took an understanding of the technology and signal processing pathways that were available in order to get there as well as to make conscious choices about the way I moved and why.  In the end, the technology we used was there precisely because it was needed to express our ideas, no more and no less.

I'm very happy with how the piece turned out.  It is a perfect repertory piece as it is completely portable, even down to the lighting and cuing.  We could easily expand it into an evening length work if we wished, as the piece itself was structured to keep moving on a strict 2-3 minute per section schedule, just giving the audience a taste of what we discovered, however I don't believe we need to.  We are already working on new projects and I look forward to seeing where we grow from here.