Dancers – concert

As of today we have done two concerts, one at the festival “Serendip” and and one at “Lillestrøm kultursenter”.

The first concert was filmed, and it can be seen bellow:

This was out first public performance as a duo and we were quite excited to see how the outcome would turn out to be.

Analysis:

• 0:05 – The beginning gets another function than earlier since now you can clearly hear the audience calming down.
• 1:25 – I like the length, but I think it should have been cut quicker, not faded out.
• 1:27 – I like this sound as it has the same function as the previous one, but another texture so there is variation.
• 1:46 – Yeah, that worked well. I think that starting with a scape in the middle range, then high range and ending with low range worked well.
• 2:02 – I should be aware of that my body is also a part of the visual aspect.
• 2:20 – I am glad Anette waited for this clear sound that stood out from the previous ones. Yet, this obvious pitching is not favorable. Maybe I should go out and look for a bass stapler or something that makes a similar sound as the pitched down version.
• 2:45 – Anette works out of routine. That is fair enough as this is our first performance and one tends to be nervous in such situations and to stick with what one knows best. Yet I like the room she takes between my “clucks”.
• 2:56 – I can like the decrease in volume, but again, I do not like the following pitching sequence.
• 3:15 – The music is evolving really slowly, yet Anette manages to make it somewhat more interesting.
• 3:36 – NO! I know I keep doing that because I like bass frequencies. Maybe I should try to fade it out, pitch it down and then fade it back in? Or I could get an extremely large singing bowl.
• 3:50 – Anette starts doing the moves I usually “squeak” my cymbals to, I choose not to join her on that, I am doing my own thing.
• 3:53 – I like those small wobbling changes in the “sound carpet”.
• 3:53 – 4:35 – I like this part.
• 4:35 – I notice that Anette is getting more intense and I choose to join on “squeaking” cymbals.
• 4:40 – Anette is done with her “move” and has moved on to something else exactly when I join on “squeaky” cymbals, I think it fits very well.
• 4:51 – It looks like Anette wanted to join that “squeaking” as we had done it before, but since she already did it the usual way with her hands, she does it with her legs. That works quite well, but I would have liked to see what had happened if she stayed in the “new room” she was in at 4:40.
• 5:20 – We start to not follow each other as clearly, mainly as a result of me not getting any sound from my cymbal, that is embarrassing yet inspirational and true.
• 5:50 – Anette keeps on doing her thing even though I stop. It look good.
• 6:15 – I try to sample water I am pouring from my bottle, but I fail. Both because the microphone is not gained high enough and that it is sparkling water and it doesn’t sound as “glugglugglugg” as it should. I feel as a result of that that the music is stagnating. However, Anette comes to my rescue.
• 6:57 – It is way to obvious that that sound was not meant to appear. It looks like I am having focus problem this minute.
• 7:12 – And as a result of my malfunctioning focus, I retreat to old habits, I guess that is what they are for. Since the singing bowl is full of sparkling water, it sounds quite dull, should have thought of that.
• 7:50 – It is easy to tell that we now are more secure, since we have done this before. But we might also be too relaxed. Yet, the audience have never seen this before, is that a valid argument?
• 9:50 – I like the progression until here, but why am I afraid of keeping it going? It sounded good. I might, there and than, have felt that it was too much of a cliche. But I clearly play just to loop it and make music of it later, not to make music with it while I loop it. Bad habit!
• 11:36 – I like the part up to here. By being in the beat, Anette gives more room for the nuances in the music.
• 11:37 – Anette is anticipating something she know I will do since that movement usually goes with the lion roar I trigger with my floor tom. Interesting, yet I do not know if I like it. She might have done that because she thought I would do it there (it would have been quite obvious considering the build-up) and just kept doing it since it would have looked strange if she did it just once, or would it? Anyways, that action shows that we both are affected by what we have rehearsed earlier, that is of course a good thing, but I don’t like it as direct and obvious as this.
• 11:55 – 13:20 – Well, it is that thing again, I am personally tired of it and I think it lasted too long, yet I got the beat slicing (the build-ups to the roars) quite well.
• 13:48 – Horrible pitching. The end result is quite cool, but I have to find a better transition.
• 14:40 – I like the transition into the new “room”, You suddenly realize it was there the whole time.
• 14:40 – 17:26 – This is my cup of tea, I enjoy the progression, the texture and the energy of this part. And I actually manage to stick to just playing for a while.
• 17:26 – Anette does something familiar (11:37), and it must have triggered me to break things up, resulting in the fade out. I have gotten feedback that this might have sounded as if it was not intended for, I should probably try to do it more convincing.
• 18:06 – Anettes rapid movements to my busy music seen out of context would have been quite boring and linear as mentioned in my previous post on this project. But in this context where she had been following the slow lines in the music for a while and then suddenly bursting out in this energy passage I found it quite suitable.
• 18:27 – This stop is much more convincing, maybe because it had happened before but I also felt that the overall energy was much more convincing.
• 18:38 – Anette clearly signs that she is done and it is my turn, based on the trading exercises we did earlier.
• 18:39 – I really enjoy the short glimpse where I am waiting for my own loop to appear, a lot of energy in that moment.
• 18:39 – 19:39 – Even though the volume and density curve is decreasing I feel that this was a good part of the piece.
• 19:39 – Fast interaction with electronics, I am getting there!
• 20:00 – Anette is literally back in the picture. I give her some space.
• 20:16 – Even though what I play here is just for looping it, I feel that it fits to the piece.
• 20:36 – I am slowing down, Anette is speeding up. Cool!
• 20:55 – Anette joins me.
• 21:37 – Anette brings structure to my muddy, shifting sounds.
• 22:05 – The sounds Anette make on the floor have an impact on the total auditive product.
• 23:54 – When Anette goes back to floor level, she marks very well that we are nearing the completion of the piece as this was the same state as she started in. She makes this final when she lies back down in the same position as she started, and luckily(?) the music is also close to what we started with.
• 25:23 – 25:35 – I like these quiet seconds where I, with my appearance keep the audience extremely focused on whether this is the ending or not. I like the ending.

Summary:

When there is more time between my comments, I feel we are doing something right since I have nothing to criticize. As you see, these parts appear in the middle of the piece, so our main problem seems to be the beginnings and the ends. That is why we decided to prepare how we were to start, but I feel that it might have affected the overall piece too much. Even though it might not seem so from the audiences perspective, it actually takes 14 minutes and 40 seconds before we are really improvising. Of course one can always say there is improvisation to a certain extent for that period too and one can ask why it has to be improvised. The only thing I can say to that is that I enjoy performing much more when I do not know anything about what is going to happen, yet I do not feel we did anything wrong since this had to be done for me to realize this.

At my request, the audio and video from the concert was streamed live to another room at the venue, where some audio and video artists did the following remix right after our concert. I enjoy this way of remixing, especially when video is included, since then, the link to the original material is much more obvious. Thanks to Bendik Baksaas (Electronics), David Aleksander Sjølie (Guitar) and Sigurd Ytre-Arne (Video).

This somehow concludes my first semester and first encounter with dancers and inter-art-form-collaborations.