Here’s a collection of thoughts on what I do as a dance musician and why.
Vision discovers parts but sound links them.
-Paul Shepard, Coming Home to the Pleistocene
My artistic aim is to deepen people’s sense of their humanity through music and dance. Dancing and making music together is an essential part of what makes us human, and it’s where I feel most creatively engaged. Seeing, hearing, and responding to one another dancing and making music strengthens and maintains individuals’ humanity and builds our shared communities.
I want to inspire and move people from existing “unbodied” by the world, to living embodied lives; from feeling pressure to be productive and predictable, to experiencing their animal presence. I want people to understand one of the most important lessons my mentor taught me: You have everything you need, in your body.
Making music with dance is a specialized craft, and while it shares a lot with other types of music making, it requires a unique approach and mindset to craft tailor-made music and sound to enhance the pedagogical and artistic impact of movement. I am invested in that pursuit and committed to developing my practice as a collaborative partner.
I believe it is important and advantageous to have live music in the dance studio. A cycle of shared energy and inspiration is possible only when the music watches the dance like the dance listens to music - Musicians and dancers in conversation, sensing and responding to one another. This is why I play: to inspire and experience the joy of a shared human experience unique to the dance.
I am primarily a percussionist, but I integrate different types of instruments into my array of in-class accompanying tools, including keyboard synthesizers, sample-based instruments, looping, and voice/singing. And while various percussion instruments usually comprise the core of my instrument setup, I rotate instruments in and out depending on my and my collaborators’ needs or preferences. Most often, I create improvised music on the spot for each exercise or combination, but I also compose fixed pieces or structures when needed.
The music I create originates in large part from visual kinesthetic sympathy, or the sense that I can feel in my body what the movement feels like to dance. It gives me information and inspiration to play music which helps the dancer succeed in executing the movement safely, compellingly, and in a way that encodes the movement deeply in their memories, body, mind, and spirit. I must be as committed to the music I’m playing as the dancers are to the dance.
During performances, I prefer performing music and sound designs live with the dance, though I sometimes create soundscapes or scores that are played back (Qlab, etc) if it’s more appropriate or required by the situation. I prefer larger-limb or kinesphere-scale musical interfaces, like drums, percussion, and digital musical instruments. I sometimes use unconventional control interfaces like motion sensors and cameras for sound designs and installations.