I am drawing on my background as a dancer much more to create this piece than in any of my other work. Music has always been a physical presence to me and processed through physical sensations arising from different parts of my body. Through my years of dance, I have understood that one of the fundamental attributes of a dancer’s style is error. Absorbing music, channeling intention mentally, and executing, which always involves some form of imperfection and error, make up a movement. These three abstracts, “motions” or steps in the process, are spaces I wish to explore in this piece.
Absorbing Music
In my practice now, the process of using music in the context of dance has much to do with the space of intersection between the body and noise. When music with a certain level of intensity is played at such a high volume, it triggers innate physiological reactions in the body. Adrenaline spikes, breathing rhythms change, and the movements that feel most natural to access begin to transform. It creates a second body underneath the skin, and when it comes to noise and deconstructs music, it feels like a synthetic or digital body is manifested within. I would like to use my sound design skills to extract this body and manifest it as a presence in the room. The compositional structure can reflect how it moves and transforms according to shifts in physical states.
Channeling Intention and Execution
The bridge between intention and execution in dance is error. Sometimes, a movement does not come out of the body as intended but opens up new pathways and dimensions of your expression that were never intended. Much of my movement style relating to my performance is harnessing this error and giving it the power to guide me as I move and interact with a space and the people inside it. I feel that this sensation can be reflected within sound design as well. So much of my sound design deals with pushing Ableton to its limits and giving it space to create unexpected and unpredictable results. When you combine audio effects and tools outside their original intention, the program “breaks,” except that nothing ever really breaks in Ableton. There is a natural alignment between my philosophy with movement and sound design. By giving more space in the writing process on the DAW for error and failure, I feel that the narrative of my movement and how it has developed can be expressed in a visceral manner.