Music for Dance

This is an electronic score to accompany dance by choreographer/video artist Ashley A. Friend. The score is played back through Max/MSP so that it can move from section to section with the dancers in real time. The dance was created as a way for Ashley to deal with her own experiences with epilepsy. Visually she draws inspiration from many sources, including many classic horror movie motifs. The sounds and music used in the score are taken from a variety of sources, cut apart, mutated, and carefully sewn together à la Frankenstein’s monster.

The last project I worked on with Seen Performance was to be a series of series of short works created through round-robin style collaboration that join in the social mingling at local house parties, challenging where we see performance.

When the doors open, the show begins.

The stage is scattered with wooden dowels and pvc fittings, but "performers" are absent. Three FOH Ladies in pretty dresses talk of clothing and whimsically burst into tiny ensemble dances. They generate a friendly mood, guiding viewers to become a single entity. Before the starting ritual is done, the audience – now a group – has built the set: two human scale boxes out of modular sections (ingeniously designed by Shana McKay Burns to play with the viewer’s visual perception of physical boundary). The Group fulfills a moment of choreography as they play together to decipher the correct construction method, and bring a new level of attention to the “stage” where the “performers” belong.