Rehearsal 5/24

Yesterday Jonathan and I had rehearsal for "unmapped" in the afternoon. Once we had all the equipment set up we began with a long improv session. We started in our, what you might call, traditional roles - he playing the guitar, me dancing. We had not been starting this way for a while - we've both been playing the guitar to start. It was very interesting starting that way again, almost a relief in a way. I really enjoyed just "dancing" by myself for a while. I did alot of big movement, moving through space, kind of complicated gestural stuff. I also think that Jonathan really enjoyed playing the guitar without me - he didn't have to deal with my limitations as a musician, or the choice I make when we're playing together (I may be wrong about this - I may be projecting...).
We also began to notice and record some of our habitual choices. For example, when we are both moving together we tend to imitate each other's movement choices. When we are passing the guitar back and forth, as Jonathan noted, we tend to do this fake-out move where we almost take/give the guitar, but then we don't. By naming these habits I hope we can notice when we are doing them as we're improvising and then find different choices. I don't mean to totally throw out the habits we recognize, but to increase the number of options we have available to us as we're improvising.
We also made a list of the number of possible groupings between Jonathan, I and the guitar. They were:
1. Jonathan playing the guitar, Daniel dancing
2. Both playing the guitar
3. Both dancing
4. Daniel playing the guitar, Jonathan dancing
5. creating a repetitive sequence on the guitar (using an echo/looping devise) that gradually fades to silence
There were a number of sub-options for each of these, but that is the general gist of it. We then practiced just doing one of these options - instead of switching back and forth. I think we both thought this was a great practice to deepen each one of these possibilities. We have been worried, or working on, the whole length of the piece (40 minutes) and have set aside the details alittle bit. I think we need to go back and dig alittle deeper.
When making a work - whether it is set or improvised - I think you are constantly going back and forth between pushing the edges wider, and digging deeper. You want to make sure it is encompassing the whole of what it is, though it can't encompass everything. You don't want to be too narrow, yet you don't want to be so shallow that it has no meaning. So, you go back and forth between exploring the work's width and depth.

Newest Work - unmapped

I have been developing a new improvisational based work with a musician - Jonathan Matis - to be performed as part of the first Capital Fringe Festival this July - and we will be performing the work on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours - (yikes!). The work - "unmapped" - is an exploration of blurring the lines between dance and music and dancer and musician. Jonathan and I begin both playing a prepared guitar that is running through a computer. We begin by creating a sound score with the computer repeating what we play and then layering over those sounds. We play the guitar with an assortment of low tech objects - chop sticks, paint brush, metal slide, vibrator - to create a very percussive dense sound. From this beginning we begin to add movement by responding to each other, moving out into space, using the guitar as a prop - passing it back and forth - so that sometimes we are both moving, sometimes one is moving and the other is playing, and sometimes we are both playing. All of the music and movement is improvised, but we do have some structures and some sourcing material. We know we start out playing the guitar together, then we take it into movement, then we go into our more traditional roles - Jonathan playing and I'm moving. We've also been working with word phrases as a beginning place to improvise from. Most of the phrases have been randomly chosen from books - the idea being to get us out of our habitual patterns. It has been interesting and challenging as many of the phrases have not been places we would have normally started from. Phrases such as "blades of fire", or "side of the wealthy", or "globe men" are a challenge to find music and movement from. We've also been surprising ourselves with what comes out of working with these phrases. This is going to continue to be a very interesting work to explore - in rehearsal, and certainly once we get to performance.