Dancers – part 4

We met again for a final rehearsal before our first concert.

Despite what I stated in the previous post,

We agreed on that we had reached a state where we temporarily are agreeing on the expression of the concept and should for a while just improvise together without any specific tasks to solve.

after reviewing our rehearsals we found some things we wanted to explore.

The “call and response” as in the previous rehearsal at 13:45:

I like this tool, but as previously stated:

(…) I might think that one or two times is enough, if it occurs for a longer time than that, it might seem we have locked us self’s too tight. That will of course depend on the context.

Unfortunately it’s quite clear that we didn’t agree clearly enough on this being strictly a “call and response” rehearsal before we started.

But it feels good to have repeated it, because now, it’s a more established tool than before.

We also wanted to look into the concept of following each other completely linear:

I did not like this at all. There is no depth in it and it feels way too naive. There can of course exist a touch of it when we for example want to gradually change who is in focus or just playing with the tension between us, but I feel it can not be as obvious and naive as this.

One interesting aspect that came out of this is where our visual focus was when trying to do the same thing at the same time. Anettes focus was on my hands, and my focus on her legs, so we were focusing on the limb closest to the most obvious communication act. Maybe, if we instead had eye contact, we could have shared intentions and been “one step ahead”?

Last Rehearsal:

Analysis:

• 0:00 – Obvious beginning, setting the mood, I’m glad that it lasts as long as it does.
• 1:08 – Unnecessary sounds, my intentions were that they would be “ambient” sounds, but it didn’t turn out as I hoped. I was inspired by the sounds in theroom from the light bulbs and other “cracking sounds” and that intention I feel is right.
• 1:21 – This sound has the ambient quality I was looking for and it triggers Anette to do her first movement.
• 1:36 – Too early for cymbals, I should have saved those frequencies for later.
• 1:42 – 1:56 – I try to do too much, cymbals, rims and “chair cracking”, it’s not clear enough what I want to express.
• 1:57 – This I consider an obvious statement. Anette gives room to me.
• 2:14 – You see that Anette already started a movement and when I introduce another sound, it affects how she carries it out.
• 2:19 – 2:30 – A “call and response” where Anette starts and when she stops, I take over, probably not conscious, but since we have rehearsed it, the the technique lives in our sub consciousness.
• 2:36 – Extremely unprofessional of me not to put my phone in silent mode.
• 2:40 – I get inspired by this happening and decides to try to get some auditive results out of the vibration feature on my phone, but fails to do so. Than again, this gives more room to Anette.
• 2:52 – In curiosity of why it doesn’t work, I tap the microphone to check it’s gain level, this of course has an auditive result which I like. This is a “technique” I have continued to use.
• 2:58 – This again inspires me to use other body parts as input source, and then of course, the most obvious, is the mouth.
• 3:12 – I change to a new texture, should have restricted my self to one.
• 3:22 – Unnecessary sounds. All the sound should have come from Anette moving on the floor.
• 3:49 – I’m back to my earlier “accident” and I like it.
• 3:56 – I like the change in background texture, but I think the change should have been faster, if not immediate.
• 4:00 – I really like the interaction between Anette and me until now, we give and take place as we feel is right, and I do not think we steel focus from each other. She could of course have done the directly opposite of what I am doing by moving a lot with extreme energy, but I think that would have been to much.
• 4:15 – I stop and Anette takes focus. It’s been back and forth for a while now.
• 4:30 – Even tough I now change the texture back to what it was initially, Anette now continues her “story” and puts the texture in a new context, I feel this presents a new room in the peace.
• 4:41 – Unnecessary sounds.
• 5:05 – Took to long before my sound reappeared looped, it should come immediately, and I have to avoid that pitching scale thing, I am extremely tired of it!
• 5:20 – I should have held the background texture longer. It is an interesting aspect with gaps and stops, but I should have saved it, I am generally too impatient. Than again, I like the new “room”.
• 5:30 – I like the sounds Anette make on the floor.
• 5:45 – More rapid actions, I like the intention, but I feel I don’t manage to keep it going.
• 6:04 – New room, I really like it, because of the acoustic organic sounds blending with the pulsating loop.
• 6:48 – For some strange reason it looks like I think what I’m doing is boring and decides to do something else, not good!
• 6:55 – Why this pause?!
• 6:59 – Same intention, new sounds, should have kept the same sounds, I liked them.
• 7:24 – I change again, not cool.
• 7:42 – Again, now with reverbs. Seems like I’m afraid of just playing on top of a loop even tough it sounds good, I’ll have to work on that.
• 7:49 – As I start looping my self, Anette also starts to loop her self, that’s cool, I don’t think it is conscious, but I like it.
• 8:13 – As previously stated, I don’t like that pitching, why do I keep doing it?
• 8:41 – Anettes loop keeps going even tough I stop, good!
• 9:00 – Anettes looping stopped, and I seem to have taken a new direction, new room.
• 9:30 – Even though I’m quite “busy”, Anette keeps her calmness emphasizing the underlaying slow rhythm.
• 9:54 – I seem too obsessed with breaks this day. I would have liked to see that idea evolve. Yet, I like the new room.
• 10:09 – Anette keeps doing looping. I like it!
• 10:23 – Perfect sync! I really enjoy when these moments appear.
• 10:32 – Anette takes the lead, good!
• 10:43 – Everything goes well until I start pitching and Anette stops.
• 10:53 – We’re back after 10 seconds of nothing.
• 10:56 – Anette is calming down, I would have liked her to keep it up and continue the lead.
• 11:10 – 13:10 – Suddenly we entered a room with great communication and I felt it was very natural and good what we did.
• 13:10 – I decide to take some space, and Anette seem to agree and gives me space.
• 13:31 – I like the way Anette slowly starts to illustrate the underlying massive slow rhythmical intentions I have, and doesn’t just go for the first most obvious impulse.
• 14:09 – YES! Once again, perfect sync!
• 14:12 – Anette starts to take back the focus.
• 14:21 – 14:50 – We decide to go hand in hand for a while and react quite linear to each other, I think that in this context and for this short period, it works well.
• 14:50 – I decide to let Anette back in focus.
• 15:07 – I decide to join and Anette keeps going, but makes space for me. It might sees as we have a common understanding of how much place there is in the total expression and adjust our selfs to this.
• 15:07 – 16:14 – I like this.
• 16:14 – 16:32 – My interaction with the electronics is way to slow.
• 16:32 – 16:37 – YES! Another sync, and many in a row.
• 17:32 – Even though it’s a cliché, I like how this room ends.
• 17:32 – I think Anette does a good job here, just keeping her loop and processing it.
• 17:58 – I don’t like what I do here, but that is probably because I am so tired of that sound.
• 18:23 – I like that Anette kept her loop as long as this, she could also have kept it even further. I get the feeling that we just do what we always do on that sound here, but I saved it for so long so it might get another effect, but unfortunately, it didn’t. We just fell into old habits.
• 18:55 – Unnecessary sounds.
• 19:00 – 21:00 – You can clearly see that I’ve lost focus and that I am still falling into old habits.
• 21:00 – 21:04 –  For a short period I feel we are onto something more aggressive, extreme here, would be cool to test it out.
• 21:29 – The same feeling comes back, should have kept it.
• 21:36 – 21:38 – The “accident” at the beginning is back. Cool.
• 21:38 – Still old habits, guess it is because we are not used to play for this long and we are loosing focus. That is bad and has to be worked on.
• 22:22 – Way too sudden fade out.
• 22:42 – And it is back, I don’t see any artistic reason for this 20 seconds absence of that loop.
• 22:42 – 26:21 – We (at least I) are still just falling into old habits and I seem quite out of focus, yet, to someone that has not heard this earlier, it might sound good?
• 26:21 – 28:31 – Even though it is quite cliché improvisation with this abrupt beat, I like how it floats on top of the all too familiar loop.
• 28:58 – It becomes too clear after a while that my intentions with playing this is mainly for looping it and pitching it down. Instead of thinking about the end result and start playing something based on that, I should instead think of what I could do with what I already am playing, than it might not sound as forced as it now does. However, I consider it a good thing to have a clear direction/goal with what I am doing since than it might sound more convincing, but the end result does not have to be what you intended it to be. So what I am saying is that I can make a plan, as I did here, regarding where to go, but then be open to derive from that plan if I sense it will sound unnatural as I should have done here.
• 29:27 – Too fast fade out.
• 29:53 – I love the ending with the trading and all the space, air and individuality.

Summary:

I feel we generally had good communication and flow trough out the piece, yet the long period of falling out of focus can not be tolerated and I have to work on that. I mean that no professional improviser can blame the surroundings or the flow of the day for a bad performance, one has to deliver quality music every time. Yet, some interesting aspects arose in the areas between full focus and the lack of it, where I noticed less seriousness and more playfulness from my side. This is where I feel that some of the most interesting and innovative turns happened, I have to remember that to play does not only mean to perform music, it also means what children do when they are free to do what they want.

I have to emphasize that there is nothing as exciting for me like when we suddenly are in sync for just a fraction of a second.

It is hard to equally divide the roles that music and dance have in the performance since people with a background in dance will probably focus more on the dance and vice versa. One could ask someone that have the same amount of experience in both dance and music, but people will look at it individually and you can, as far as I know, never have a completely neutral relationship to art.

However, it is nice for us working towards a feeling of equality.