slightlymoving

Jacob and I performed tonight. First time together since the start of the year.

We had a fairly short warmup time, which served to show us just how little stamina we have. And during the day we’d been discussing our practice and teaching and thoughts about improv process. Entanglement.

The performance went reasonably well and in reviewing I think that while we have a strong performance ‘muscle’ our dance and compositions ‘muscles’ have atrophied somewhat. I’m keen to see what happens over the next few nights…

Earlier in the day I’d listened to the Hon Nicola Roxon talk at GP’09 conference about national health reform. The Q+A that followed was interesting and was recorded as part if their ‘consultation’ process. I like to think that the reforms are being approach in an open and strategic manner, but it’s hard to tell right now.

Oh oh… Starting to mix my posts…

went to sydney on the weekend to see the final show of the luminous festival, which was curated by Brian Eno.

as a finale to the festival he had brought together a bunch of extremely talented, highly respected and innovative musicians; Karl Hyde, Leo Abrahams, Jon Hopkins and The Necks. they also had Toby Vogel doing some projected visuals. oh, and Eno himself performing - first time in Australia apparently.

they were performing three concerts in a row and were slated as being improvised. i would have loved to see all three to really get a sense of what they were doing. and it fits in with the impression, comparison, perspective ideas on performance improvisation that jacob and i have discussed. simply put, experiencing improvised work three times gives you a chance to triangulate and develop your understanding of what those particular artists are doing (in terms of performance at least). the first performance only gives you an impression of what they do, seeing a second allows you to have a comparison, a third time gives you perspective. unfortunately, i could only really afford one show, so my experience is limited to the first show.

the concert hall at the sydney opera house was almost full. probably about 2,000 people there for the first concert I’d say. Karl has put up some photos of the stage on the Underworld blog, which will give you an idea of what it looked like. he seems very pleased to have been involved. we were sitting in the second row, very close to the main speakers - which initially worried me but the mix was excellent and not too loud at all. the audience seemed weighted towards people older than 45 or so, with a smattering of kids and a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings. i imagine Eno himself would be the main draw card and given his longevity in the music industry there would be a wide range of ages interested in his work.

so… the work.

i can only really comment on the first concert, which was a continuous one and half hours of minimalist, ambient, soundscapes and songs, with grooves and rhythms providing anchors to the interactions of electronic and acoustic instrumentation. they also played a short encore as well, almost pop really.

at the bottom of this post there are links to some reviews that describe the work, so i’m not going to do that. what i thought a lot about though (as i often do) was the process. according to Karl they’d had two days together to devise the work. at the end of the set Brian suggested that they were songs by saying something along the lines of “i bet you weren’t expecting us to play songs. you thought we were just making it up.” and there were clear indicators of scoring used to define the different sections of the work. Brian would write things on scraps of paper as instructions to the musicians, as well as providing cues through gestures and visual contact. so essentially it was a structured improvisation with Brian as the band leader. sometimes the audience was shown the instructions via projection, and sometimes not.

there’s a nice quote from eddie in a blog post about the event:

When I closed my eyes I experienced — more than listened to — the sounds; it became less about being an audience member and more about participating in the event.

this encapsulates the idea that in an improvisation there is such a vital link to audience - of course it exists in all performance, but i like how eddie has exposed it in this instance.

if you’re keen to read more, there’s an ad-hoc review from a punter, and a review in the australian newspaper.

there are some videos of the event on youtube as well.

i re-found an email conversation between Lloyd Swanton and myself from June 2000.

i’d emailed Lloyd sometime after first seeing The Necks live. i’d heard their recordings a number of times before then, but it was the live experience that gave me a better understanding of how they worked. after the live show i was curious about their process. at that time i had been working with State of Flux for a few years - Flux work[ed]s (more on that another time!) with real-time choreography using contact improvisation as a foundation. it featured 5 dancers; janice florence, martin hughes, wendy smith, jacob lehrer and myself. we research[ed] contact through teaching and performing. group dynamics and development of material and structure in the moment were an important part of the work of Flux.

so, from that basis, i was interested in how The Necks worked as a group. i don’t think Lloyd would mind me sharing some of the responses he wrote to my questions about process, but to be fair i’m going to show what i wrote too:

i’m interested in what your process is… how you create structure and keep track of it real time - what arises through performance - how that may differ from rehearsals - how you communicate to each other - what your understandings are of what is occuring when playing together - how you negotiate the line between leading and following the improv - what response the audience can generate - i think i could go on here…

so, a bit sketchy from me - but reading this again i remember how i was interested in how in a group improvisation each participant can have wildly differing understandings/thoughts/stories about what is occurring, what has occurred and what will occur. there was a time when with Flux we explored this through reporting on what we thought was occurring as it happened - each person naming how they saw the material and structure evolving as it did. in a way this helped define the improvisational practice further while also showing us where our ideas converged and departed.

but back to Lloyd. there are a few great things he wrote about that I wanted to share. the first is related to what Jacob and I call entwining or entanglement. before performing we would take time to just spend time together noodling - maybe physically, maybe verbally, maybe both - often with no particular focus other than to start linking in - throwing lines over each other, weaving threads around each other, removing the focus on the upcoming performance. i get the feeling jacob could describe it better than that. from Lloyd’s email:

Before a performance, (huge trade secret being given away here!) we’re usually doing something stupid in the band room, like a kicking competition with a Coke can and a wastepaper bin. Perhaps this clears our minds, wipes out stage fright, helps us relax. Perhaps it’s just stupidity. Whatever - we’re certainly not sitting there psyching ourselves up.

preparation can occur in many different ways - and i think what lloyd wrote has a link into both the notion of entanglement and a decluttering or neutralising. a group functions through it’s relationships and it’s communication - sometimes the focus on the relationship can allow the opportunity to connect. more from Lloyd:

However, we’re talking about the broader concepts of music constantly when we’re just hanging out, or travelling on tour, (and we’ve been together a long time) and I think these ideas settle in our minds fairly subliminally; they consequently lodge there very firmly, and help to give a unity in the direction of our improvisations.

i’ll continue this later. got to have some sleep now.

on tuesday night this week i went to a gig at bennetts lane (long established jazz venue in melbourne)

tony buck and magda mayas were performing on prepared piano and drum kit/percussion.

it was a fantastic performance. they opened with a 50 minute set - playing dislocations, fractures, meetings, divergence, pointillist rhythms, sustained explorations of texture, pauses, silence, boggling controlled complexity and unerring complicité, even in opposition. really quite stunning. and absorbing. their myspace recordings don’t really do them justice, as their physical performance is as engaging as their auditory performance.

i’m interested in duets. and the idea of working. to me the pieces they played exemplified some of the foundations of good improvisation - presence, listening and allowing.

closing my eyes i would often be surprised at how many layers of sound were present - of how there sometimes seemed to be a third or fourth voice in the music. if only it were possible to allow that in dance…

go see them if you can.

when the Australian Choreographic Centre (ACC) closed it’s doors last year (after 11 years of supporting choreographic development they lost their funding from the Australia Council and the board shifted focus to youth dance with QL2 becoming the flagship) it was uncertain if Precipice would continue.

Precipice is a dance/movement mini-festival that the ACC hosted and then ran for almost a decade. as well as providing a chance for a national gathering of those interested in performance improvisation it has been used as a vehicle for research by a bunch of scientists.

fortunately the closure of the ACC hasn’t stopped the gathering. today was the opening day of Precipice and i hope to attend as much of it as i can over the weekend. we’re at the start of Neuro block so i’m feeling a little bit of pressure about my study - but all being well i should get a lot of dancing in this weekend.