Stephanie Lake, Alisdair Macindoe, Conversation Piece, Lucy Guerin Inc photo Ponch Hawkes |
These days the ubiquity of digital audio processing software makes it relatively quick and easy for the solo composer to create epic, symphonic pieces and dance has become the seeding ground for a kind of new electronic baroque. Often these soundtracks are masterful, but after seeing so many works in quick succession it is refreshing to experience collaborations between choreographers and composers or sound artists that attempt more subtle, conceptual and nuanced modes. An interesting anomaly in Dance Massive 2013 was the strange flashback to the days when composers were too expensive and choreographers cobbled together pre-made commercial tracks for their design. And why not—just to mix things up a little?
nostalgia for the signified
In Conversation Piece (which I saw in Sydney, not in its Dance Massive version) Lucy Guerin’s inclusion of songs such as Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ “Mercy Seat” performed by Johnny Cash or The Cure’s “A Forest,” seems pragmatic and devoid of irony. They are used to accompany the buoyant dances that curiously rupture the otherwise text-driven work and are clearly a “cheat”—they get us to where we need to go emotionally and atmospherically via their well established associations. However Guerin keeps things edgy, utilising the considerable skills of Robin Fox as sound designer to shift Conversation Piece towards darker places. The true complexity of the sound design is in the seamless manipulation of the iPhone technology as a multipurpose tool (as Apple has always wanted us to believe). The addition of the Garage Band rendition of Kylie Minogue’s “Come Into My World” (composed by Cathy Dennis and Robert Davis) is a stroke of quirky brilliance and serves to thematically integrate the idea of inner and outer worlds, personal and public soundtracks.
Monster Body, Atlanta Eke photo Rachel Roberts |
haunted weather
Antony Hamilton, Melanie Lane, Black Project 1 photo Ponch Hawkes |
In Black Projects 2, however, the score, composed by Alisdair Macindoe (also a very fine dancer in Stephanie Lake and Lucy Guerin’s works), offers the complete opposite. Here the dancers are dictated to by the pulsing beats, as a six-headed creature shape-shifts and osmoses leading to a final holy cosmic epiphany. While well-produced and cinematic, the soundtrack offers little mystery, letting the dancers and us know where we are up to at all times.
big, bigger, biggest
Future Perfect, Jo Lloyd photo Ponch Hawkes |
The soundtrack for Jo Lloyd’s Future Perfect by Duane Morrison feels close to subsuming the dancers and while transcendence is on the agenda, it feels a little more bullying than uplifting. Flavoured by 1980s synthesiser sounds the creators set themselves a difficult task. Starting at such a high sonic point, there’s little room for escalation either energetically or volume-wise throughout the piece.
Sandra Parker’s The Recording is an exploration of the disjunction between the body, gesture and mediatised performance, so allowing Steve Heather’s soundtrack to be bigger than the dancing is clearly a conscious choice. Composed from recordings of some of Australia’s and Europe’s leading improvising musicians, who are better known for their textural, pointillist sonorities, Heather’s score is surprisingly luscious and harmonically driven, becoming increasingly more romantic, even approaching the parodic with its Latino-lament conclusion. Does it mean that Parker succeeded in her exploration if I found the music more engaging than the physical performance?
Of course sometimes the hyperbolic soundtrack approach is perfectly apt as in Jethro Woodward’s score for Skeleton by Larissa McGowan. The work is about forces acting upon the body—both physical and cultural—and Woodward’s super energetic, highly fragmented score of smashing glass and sudden impacts mixed with computer game bleeps and cinematic howls, grunts and screams is masterfully constructed. He even allows for a quieter lyricism near the end, interestingly not paralleled by the dance which remains muscular, taut and edgy. The score is nerve janglingly relentless, yet utterly appropriate for the work.
Tara Soh, James Pham, Lauren Langlois, Leif Helland, Niharika Senapati, Alya Manzart, 247 Days, Chunky Move photo Jeff Busby |
Don’t get me wrong, I love a vast soundtrack but perhaps what is beginning to perplex me is that the “bigger and louder is better” approach is in danger of becoming the default setting for contemporary dance, not only in the mainstream but also the independent sector. (Is this the place to mention that, one female “sound theorist” aside, all the composer/sound designers in Dance Massive were male?) While there’s no doubt that it is effective/affective, is this approach conceptually engaging?
dancing dialogues
Alisdair Macindoe, Sara Black, Dual photo Ponch Hawkes |
Natalie Abbott, Sarah Aitken, Physical Fractals photo Ponch Hawkes |
Tim Darbyshire’s More or Less Concrete works with a similar premise to Physical Fractals but pushes it to its ultimate conclusion. The three dancers are closely miked, every movement, mumble, rustle, breath heightened for the audience via the headphones they are invited to wear. Here sound is not so much a by-product of movement but rather the movement seems decided by the sounds they will produce. The gentle “shhhhh” of bodies against the floor, the “phhhhhhh” of bodies rubbing against each other in polyester overalls, the slap of hands hitting the floor all call for the body to form odd shapes and perform actions that are the dance itself. Only occasionally is an effect added, some reverb or ring modulation to expand an action further into the space. Where Physical Fractals achieves a symbiosis of sound and movement, More or Less Concrete creates a complete synthesis.
Finally on matters of integrated sound and action, Ashley Dyer’s Life Support (made with a long list of collaborators including Sam Pettigrew on ‘sound and objects’) also deserves a mention not so much for its integration of body and sound but rather as an inhabited sound and light installation. Above an ominous and insistent hum the smoke machines used to fill the increasingly claustrophobic space provide a utilitarian and deeply disturbing soundtrack. The sonic highlight is an all-too brief performance by a smoke ring orchestra—upturned speaker cones with buckets attached emit rough farty sounds, the vibrations sufficient to puff air for the creation of smoke rings. I would like to see/hear a whole concert of that!
festival compression
Tony Osborne, Life Support, Ashley Dyer photo Rachel Roberts |
Dance Massive 2013, Arts House, Dancehouse, Malthouse, March 12-24, 2013; http://www.dancemassive.com.au
Due to various constraints several shows in Dance Massive were not able to be addressed here: Marrugeku’s Gudirr Gudirr, Lee Serle’s P.O.V., Matthew Day’s Intermission, Hannah Mathew’s Action/Response, and Dance Exchange’s dance for the time being – Southern Exposure.
RealTime issue #114 April-May 2013 pg. 34
© Gail Priest; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]