The Green Room: From on stage, back stage and the theater seats, the Performing Arts blog illuminates the intersecting worlds of dance, theater, and music.
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance. Get acquainted with the captivating sounds of Malian singer and musician Fatoumata Diawara before she performs with her band at the Cedar Cultural Center [...]
Fatoumata Diawara. Photo: Pedro A.Pina
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance.
Get acquainted with the captivating sounds of Malian singer and musician Fatoumata Diawara before she performs with her band at the Cedar Cultural Center this Friday, April 12. Copresented by the Walker, the show begins at 8 pm.
Fatoumata Diawara has something to say. Or sing rather. Although I don’t speak her language (Wassoulou), I can’t help feeling that she has something important to express. Perhaps she is suggesting new ways of thinking and feeling about each other (and our world)? Maybe she sings about life in Mali? For me, I am simply drawn in by the music itself.
With effective simplicity, much of her work functions like a train running on its track. These songs groove at consistent tempos until arriving back to their introductory seed. When listening to this music, I am struck by its relatively neutral harmony, creating feelings which are neither obviously happy or sad. At the forefront, Diawara has an insistent and animated voice, occasionally sending out speedy rap-like melodies or pentatonic embellishments. Second to the voice, the guitars are catchy, and regularly display angular and intervallic motifs. For this LISTENING MIX, I’ve brought together the afro-disco chants of Dur-Dur Band, the intricate sound tapestries of Argentinian singer Juana Molina, the sunny pop-riffs from all-female Indonesian group Dara Puspita, and others.
Learn a bit about Malian singer and musician Fatoumata Diawara before she performs at the Cedar Cultural Center in conjunction with the Walker this Friday. 1. She is an advocate for peace in Mali. She has organized 40 of Mali’s most famous musicians to record a song and video supporting peace. 2. As a child [...]
Photo: Zoe Klinck
Learn a bit about Malian singer and musician Fatoumata Diawara before she performs at the Cedar Cultural Center in conjunction with the Walker this Friday.
1. She is an advocate for peace in Mali. She has organized 40 of Mali’s most famous musicians to record a song and video supporting peace.
2. As a child she danced with her father’s dance troupe and would invent dances for the entire troupe to learn.
4. Diawara ran away to France. In 2002, she was invited to perform with the French theater company Royale de Luxe. In Malian Society unmarried women are considered minors, so she needed her parent’s permission. After they didn’t give permission, she boarded a plane and performed with Royale de Luxe in various shows around the world.
5. While acting, she liked to sing backstage for her own amusement. Once heard by the director, she started singing solos during company performances.
6. While singing in a cafe during her breaks from touring she met Cheikh Tidiane Seck, the Malian musician and producer. Seck invited her to travel with him back to Mali to work on two projects as chorus vocalist; Seya, the Grammy–nominated album by Malian singer Oumou Sangaré, and Red Earth, the Grammy–winning Malian project by American jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater.
7. Diawara’s EP Kanou was released by World Circuit in Europe in the spring of 2011, followed by her debut album Fatou in the fall. Nonesuch released the Kanou EP in the US fall 2011 and Fatou was released last August.
To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, filmmaker and writer Justin Schell shares his perspective on Tuesday’s concert by John Zorn. Agree or disagree? [...]
John Zorn at Jazz Middelheim 2012 Photo: Bruno Bollaert, Flickr, used under Creative Commons license
To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, filmmaker and writer Justin Schell shares his perspective on Tuesday’s concert by John Zorn. Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!
There’s something curious about having retrospectives for music and musicians, to commemorate or, perhaps worse, memorialize this music or that musician, especially since music is the ephemeral art form par excellence. This is especially true in the case of John Zorn, the subject of last weekend’s celebrations at the Walker, who has in many ways built his musical career on the most ephemeral of musics, that of improvisation in its various guises.
Herbert Marcuse once wrote that works of art can become “neutralized as a classic.” After an audience member asked him what he thought his greatest accomplishment was, he responded curtly, “I don’t think in those terms.” There is very little sense that Zorn is worried about his works becoming neutralized, if only because of his acerbic wit personality. (He launched more f-bombs in one performance at the Walker than I think I’ve heard in all the shows I’ve reviewed, combined.) And yet Zorn is well-known for celebrations of his “decade” birthdays, and the 60th is no different, with events happening around the world.
Such a juxtaposition (at best, or at worst, a contradiction) is only one that was on display at the Walker. Zorn’s yellow-inflected camo pants with the Jewish tzitzit was perhaps the most visible, but there were deeper musical things happening on the McGuire’s stage. Having never seen Zorn live before, I was struck how the dynamics of improvisation and composition, freedom and control played out through the day’s concerts, which drew on music from his earliest game pieces (Hockey, Cobra) to more recent works (released by groups Nova Express and The Concealed).
There were only two pieces in the evening where Zorn wasn’t on stage: Marc Ribot’s performance of excerpts from The Book of Heads, where he used all manner of objects (including balloons!) on his frayed guitar that looks like it had seen many performances of this particular Zorn work, and Erik Friedlander’s gorgeous solo cello arrangements of pieces from Zorn’s Book of Angels series.
Zorn himself only played on two pieces, Hockey (an early game piece) and, one of the highlights of the entire festival, a blistering live score to Wallace Berman’s cut-up film Aleph. Zorn’s contribution was skronky-as-hell alto sax runs, Kenny Wollesen on drums (where he is equally impressive, though he spent most of the night on the vibes), and Greg Cohen. Given the applause afterwards, this was what many folks in the audience were waiting for (including one heckler who had earlier questioned Zorn as to where his sax was; the response he got from the sax’s owner was characteristically Zorn: “At home, motherfucker.”)
More often than not, though, Zorn was a conductor of the various ensembles that took the stage, even some that didn’t necessarily need a conductor. Conducting and leading for Zorn is just as much of an active role as the musicians making the sounds that make up the music. For perhaps his best-known work, Cobra, he was conductor, signal caller, and ringleader all rolled into one, holding up various cards and signaling to musicians what to play and when. Yet the musicians (which included Twin Cities improvisers Michelle Kinney on cello and Joey Schad on keyboards) could also choose who they wanted to play with (or sometimes against) and could even assume the role of conductor by donning a piece of headwear. As the musicians moved through four movements, sometimes cacophonous, sometimes luminescent, it seemed that Zorn struck an incredible melding of both the fun of the best sports moments with the intellectual exercise and reward of avant-garde improvised music.
Yet I think his presence for groups like the often-manic, Klezmer-influenced jams of the Masada Trio (comprised of Friedlander, violinist Marc Freedman, and bassist Greg Cohen), in which he sat on the ground in front of them calling out tempos and pointing at musicians for solos, backgrounds, and other musical sections, speaks more of a desire—or perhaps need—for control. Later in this same set, the larger band Bar Khokba took the stage, and again Zorn was just off to the side, sitting with score in front of him, calling out tempos and solos much the same way he did with the Masada Trio. Yet here he was even more precise in his demands and gestures, at one point even telling what specific pattern the drummer Joey Baron should play.
In all of these instances, though, Zorn and the musicians playing his music look like they’re having the time of their life. Especially Joey Baron. The smile on Baron’s face was only eclipsed by the bulging neck muscles as his arms catapulted to the different parts of his set. One of my great joys in life is seeing really joyful musical collaboration and connection in live improvised music performance, and the relationship between Zorn, his musicians, and between the musicians themselves, was absolutely thrilling. And the person who seemed to be having the most fun on-stage was often Zorn himself.
Why do musicians like this arrangement? None of these musicians need a conductor or bandleader, at least not in any conventional sense. Perhaps it frees them to explore their own improvisational capacities without necessarily having to worry about the dynamics of the “piece,” i.e. doing this for this many bars, that for that many bars, etc. Or they can avoid deciding things like solo order, length, etc before the performance, meaning that each performance has a greater feel of spontaneity. There is also a deep sense of care from Zorn towards his musicians. At one point, Wollesen wanted one of the stage crew to get him a towel and, until that happened, Zorn kept checking on him until someone handed him that towel.
Despite so much emphasis on collaboration and creation with other people, the festival ended with Zorn having, in many ways, the ultimate exercise of musical power and control. Sitting at the organ console at St. Mark’s, an eerie blue-green light casting upwards from the music stand, he played towering block chords, Bach-like chorales, and pedal tones that barely registered as “notes” but shook the cathedral’s fixtures and pipe enclosures, making the entire building his rhythm section.
Ending the concert in a more traditionally sacred space seems to bring the juxtapositions and contradictions of the evening to a head. While what Zorn created on the organ was certainly keeping in his iconoclastic character, and most likely tones, clusters, and foundation-shaking pedal tones are not usually played on this particular organ, there still was a sense of reverence, if not for the space, than for what the music makes the space become. In conversation with curator Phillip Bither at the start of the festival, Zorn spoke of the ritual, magic, and purity of music that works—and works for—a higher plane of knowledge and truth, even if that truth might only be a fleeting moment, in a basement studio, a multimillion dollar stage, or a towering cathedral, and even after 60 years.
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance. Bringing her ethereal vocal melodies, vintage electronic sounds, and imaginative soundscapes, Los Angeles musician Julia Holter performs at the Walker as a part [...]
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance.
Bringing her ethereal vocal melodies, vintage electronic sounds, and imaginative soundscapes, Los Angeles musician Julia Holter performs at the Walker as a part of our in-gallery music series Sound Horizon, this Thursday, April 11. Free and open to the public, these 30-minute performances begin at 6, 7, and 8 pm.
Utilizing analog synthesizers, drum machines, keyboards, and vocal effects, Julia Holter creates a dreamlike sound universe uniquely her own. Coming from the LA cultures of CalArts, Dublab Radio, and Echo Park, Holter seamlessly unifies art song with pop song. Within her music, the vibe can transition from direct melodies into abstract sound collages. Much of her work emphasizes texture, harmony, and narrative structure. For this Listening Mix, I’ve chosen to integrate the whispered vocals of swedish group El Perro Del Mar, the playful vocal layering of Grimes, the echoed storytelling of John Maus, and the psychedelic lullabies of Broadcast.
Dance and the Body Look Who’s Looking Now: How We Watch, What We Think, and Why It Matters is a four-part series on watching dance. Discussions are divided into sections on the body, space, time, and action/energy. The series aims to give audiences the tools to discuss the elements of dance performance and dig deeper [...]
Dance and the Body
Look Who’s Looking Now: How We Watch, What We Think, and Why It Matters is a four-part series on watching dance. Discussions are divided into sections on the body, space, time, and action/energy. The series aims to give audiences the tools to discuss the elements of dance performance and dig deeper into the philosophical meaning behind the works. Feel free to add to the discussion and share your own insights in the comment section below.
Understanding dance performance begins with simply describing what we observe. Certain terms help us communicate these observations. For example, we can use terms that describe parts of the body, like head, face, shoulders, arms, legs, torso, and feet. We can describe how bodies in motion create shapes and divide space. We might describe the symmetry or asymmetry of the arrangement of bodies on stage, or we might describe rounded or angular motifs in the positions of the dancers (Cunningham). We might describe the dance techniques employed in the performance. Some techniques are muscular (Streb), while others require dancers to move from their bones and organs (BodyCartography Project); some techniques use breath at the center of movement (Eiko & Koma); and some techniques use all these elements. Beginning with simple descriptions of what we see, we can begin to think about how a dance performance makes us feel and what it means to us. Reflecting further on the cultural context of a performance, we can begin to consider what it might mean to its choreographers and dancers, and what its broader cultural impact might be.
The body is the instrument of dance. We – as audiences – watch how the body moves or doesn’t move. We observe shape, movement, and technique; body size, gender, race, age, and more. We make these observations and others through visual cues whose cultural histories predate the present performance. What is communicated through dance performance depends both on the dancers’ bodies and the audiences’ cultures of perception. That is, our bodies, as viewers, are part of the meaning.
Imagine a performance involving black dancers and white audience members. In the United States, this occurs in and communicates an ongoing negotiation of power dynamics and cultural conversations. The same can be said of a performance involving a woman dancing for an audience of men. In these examples, the significance of the dance has to do in equal part with the dancers and the audience members: race and gender are part of ever-changing cultures of racism and heteronormativity. These are only two examples of ways in which visual cues interact with audience culture to affect a performance’s meaning, message, and impact, in the field of dance and beyond. Many dancers and choreographers, aware of the complexity of visual cues, create work with such negotiations in mind.
Choreographer Bill T. Jones creates art with his audience in mind. He observes that the audience that sees his work is mostly white, and he admits that this awareness informs his choreographic choices. Jones addresses issues of interest for his audiences, challenging what he perceives to be the social and cultural assumptions viewers bring to a performance. In discussing his 2012 work Story/Time, Jones asks audiences to “watch [ourselves] watching.” He explains, “I’m always aware that I am a subjective consciousness, trying to observe something and trying to relate to it. It makes me very self-conscious, but it also makes me feel like I am participating in the world of ideas.”
An opportunity arises to “watch [ourselves] watching” during a section of Story/Time. The same story is repeated three times, each time accompanied by a different choreographic representation – first by a black woman dancing abstractly, alone on the couch, then by the cast, narratively performing the story as it is told, and finally repeated again by the cast with their backs to audience and with their real names inserted into the story. The repetition and variation emphasizes how bodies and culture can influence the perceived meaning of a story. During the piece, Jones retells a story centering on relationships, struggle, and violence and the sequence of events that unfolds. The original version of the story is as follows:
A woman is sitting alone on the couch, distraught, because she can’t pay her mortgage. The father and daughter enter and try to comfort the mother. Then, the landlord [sic] comes in with his goons, demanding the money. The mother says, “have mercy, we don’t have the money. Please, please give us more time.” The landlord says, “I don’t care, I gave you another month already. This is not a fucking charity.” He tells his lackeys, “take the furniture.” The father screams, “But you can’t do this!” the landlord says, “not only can I do this, but I’m going to take her, as well.” The mother shouts, “no, no, no, no!” as the landlord seizes the daughter and begins ravishing her. The father tries to intervene, fails, and has a heart attack. The landlord, full of himself, walks away. The son enters the scene, witnessing the carnage. The mother tells him, “The landlord is the cause of all the troubles.” The son, full of fury, takes his revenge.
The story itself is an example of using the body as a weapon for control, reinforcing dynamics of sexism and classism.
After watching each segment, some questions to consider are: What is conveyed when it is performed by a black woman? How did the impact of the story change when the dancers pantomimed the events? How did the bodies of the people portraying each character influence your feelings about it? What do you think that means? What about when the dancers’ real names are used and they are portraying themselves? How do Jones’s presence on stage and his narration impact the overall presentation? Does the impact change when the dancers have their backs to the audience?
In all three iterations, the bodies performing on stage influence the significance of the piece and affect how it is perceived by the audience. In what way might the meaning change in relation to the cultural background of the viewer? Taken together, these considerations inspire unique interpretations that arise equally from the bodies of the performers and the bodies of the audience members.
Connotations of the body vary from community to community. In times of war, the body is often used as a weapon and as a tool of control. In the 20th century, the Democratic Republic of Congo was fraught with political and military coups, political corruption, poverty, civil wars, and human rights violations. In a 2010 performance, Congolese artist Faustin Linyekula (lin-yay-coo-la) reflected on the significance of the body during political upheaval and instability:
So, you have a body. The ultimate territory you could occupy. And you know what? History could be understood through the lens of the evolutions of forms of violence against the body. Not only the history of my country, which has been particularly violent against the body, but any people, any country, can be understood through that angle. The evolution of forms of violence against the body. So, maybe a dancer is a fortune or a curse.
As Linyekula describes, violence against the body is not restricted to select countries or cultures. Violence against the body is a common phenomenon among all human cultures, and it has evolved over time. Rape, slavery, and mutilation are examples of extreme brutality, but violence also takes on more subtle and nuanced forms through systemic racism, sexism, classism, and religionism, to name a few. Dance and performance remind us of the embodied human experience in their portrayal of relationships, emotion, struggle, perseverance, elegance, and beauty. Live performance not only invites embodied empathy for characters and actors, but invites us to see the impact of our own interactions with other people. As audience members, we experience ourselves as embodied participants in an embodied story.
The methods that performers use to get us to challenge our own notions of the body vary greatly, but they all contribute valuable information and experiences to the ongoing dialogue around the body and the cultural habits that it bears.
Deborah Hay hails from the Judson Dance Theater, a dance collective whose philosophy centered on dismantling the conventions and theatricality that often accompanied dance performance and utilized every day movement as the predominant vocabulary. They organized informal performances in unconventional places, without elaborate lighting or costuming, in an effort to convey their true selves.
For her original performance of O’ Beautiful, Deborah Hay hired a costume designer to design a “post-apocalyptic looking costume… it did not feel appropriate to me, at all, in that it strongly influenced my dancing and really got in the way for me. I felt quite limited by the cuteness of the costume.” During one rehearsal in the Texas heat, Hay rehearsed the piece in the nude.
I’m in the studio one day and it’s so hot, I just take off all my clothes and I start performing O’ Beautiful and that was the costume. And what I experienced performing that piece without any clothes on was so phenomenal that [nudity] had to be the costume.
Hay no longer performs the piece live, renamed Beauty, but performs A Lecture on the Performance of Beauty in which she discusses the evolution of the piece while projecting two performances of it (one in the post-apocalyptic costume and the other in the nude) side by side.
Hay’s change of opinion in how to (un)dress for the piece was a response to her daily experiences (climate control). The banality of those circumstances, however, does not change the cultural significance of a woman in her 60s performing in the nude. How differently would the performance have been perceived if she were in her 20s or 30s? If she were black? If she were male? How does showing the side by side performance change the viewer’s perception? Seeing the performances side by side, we become increasingly aware of the differences that costuming has on the body and the impact costuming has on our interpretation. Since Hay no longer performs the work live, in costume or in the nude, the audience watches a video of her dancing, while she gives a lecture, live, about the work. Her academic presentation and intellectualization of the piece further de-sexualizes the performance.
Though Hay found comfort in her nudity, not every dancer or company agrees that the uncostumed self is the “true self.” In the tradition of the Harlem vogue balls, one’s true self was her or his attitude.
This realness, what is interesting, is that it includes all the artificial means that you may need to use… While realness, to be real, you may use a lot of makeup, a lot of fake bra, a lot of costumes, a lot of accessories that’s going to make you be real. So this is this interesting situation where being real is not getting rid of all the cultural elements and all the artifices, but being real is using everything you may use, from hormones to costumes to heels to fake dick to pass as what you want to pass as. – François Chaignaud
To the members of Judson Theater, their bodies “true forms” were revealed by ridding performance of traditional theatrical elements like costumes, hairstyles, and stage makeup. Dancers in Harlem’s vogue balls took an opposite approach, utilizing all available technology for altering bodies to represent their “true selves” so that the images and persona that they presented to the world matched their inner ideas of their bodies. In both cases, the notion of “realness” has the body at its center – perhaps because we, as a society, place the body at the center, taking social and cultural cues from what we see, who we see, and how we see.
Whether making physical or philosophical observations about the dancing body, perception and understanding are undeniably influenced by the culture in which we live. Analysis of the performing body requires contextualizing the work based on the background of the choreographer, the cast performing, and the demographics of the viewers. Each participant brings with her a body of unique experiences and varied perspectives that together effect the overall reception, meaning, and impact of a work. Dance is more meaningful for viewers who bring this awareness to a performance.
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance. Get to know John Zorn, the quintessential musician of the New York avant-underground, before his colossal performance marathon at the Walker this Saturday, [...]
John Zorn. Photo: Scott Irvine
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance.
Get to know John Zorn, the quintessential musician of the New York avant-underground, before his colossal performance marathon at the Walker this Saturday, April 6. Joined by Zorn’s bands and other guest musicians, Zorn @ 60 celebrates the artist’s 60th birthday with three unique shows, a conversation led by senior curator Philip Bither, and a free organ concert at midnight.
Pulling inspiration as much from No Wave as from the classical giants John Cage and Stockhausen, Zorn’s work embodies various styles: atonal, jazz, punk, gamelan, cinema, and klezmer music. Although most are familiar with his notoriously boisterous saxophone solos, for this music mix, I’m interested in showcasing his softer and more melodious side. Paired with some of Zorn’s songs, I’ve included lachrymose pizzicatos of Erik Friedlander, driving bodily rhythms of Nicolas Jaar, lulling descants of Blade Runner’s Vangelis, mantric bell repetitions of Lucky Dragons, and more.
John Zorn / Motzee / 0:0
Erik Friedlander / Aberdeen / 2:29
John Zorn / Chazal / 5:56
Shigeru Umebayashi / Yumeji’s Theme / 7:00
John Zorn / Koryojang / 10:02
Nicolas Jaar / With Just Once Glance You / 16:24
John Zorn / Somnambulisme / 19:54
Kate Bush / Night Scented Stock / 22:05
John Zorn / Mao’s Moon / 22:58
Vangelis / Thinking of Rachel / 28:26
John Zorn / Family Found (Vocal) / 29:32
Meredith Monk / Long Shadows 1 / 32:10
John Zorn / Ilusion / 34:29
lucky dragons / Blond Rats / 37:15
John Zorn / Work Trance / 40:54
Susumu Yokota / Kirakiraboshi / 44:14
To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions (it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators). Today, Sean Donovan shares his perspective on Thursday night’s first Sound Horizon [...]
Nate Wooley Photo: Nicola Carpenter
To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions (it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators). Today, Sean Donovan shares his perspective on Thursday night’s first Sound Horizon performance from trumpeter Nate Wooley. Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
It’s a few minutes before Wooley’s performance. As I enter the room, I choose to sit in a small folding chair (instead of the pillow discs on the floor). Eyes closed, Wooley is sitting hunched inward with his trumpet, perhaps meditating/centering before he begins. My senses start to adjust to the dim light, the echoes of audience whispers, the slight breeze circulating the cave-like space. While multicolored projections show us night-time footage of Nauman’s studio, the large white-walled Walker room houses a simultaneous vibe of anxious surveillance and calming spaciousness. Unlit, Wooley is in a chair on top of a small boxed platform in the center of the room surrounded by 20-30 audience members. In addition to his trumpet, he sits next to his amplifier, a few microphones, a rubber mute, and a digital sound-effecting foot pedal.
After a brief introduction from Walker curator Doug Benidt, applause, and an anticipatory silence from the audience, Wooley slowly breaths into a sustained and steady pitch. This single note lays down a “home-base” for this exploratory sonic journey. What started as a soft and simple unwavering tone begins to crescendo into a fully enveloping chorus of timbred variations. The multiplications of all of these wave-shapes build up a dense sonic mass of overtones. I look around the room and notice many people beginning to close their eyes with the musician.
Nate Wooley Photo: Nicola Carpenter
While continuing a circular breath, Wooley gradually adds a mute to the equation. He begins to bend the pitch and articulate falling phrases. From this moment forward, my mind goes into a synesthetic mode of imagery and stories. I start to hear mournful elephants and lumber being cut. Next, he transitions into rapid and repetitive trill patterns (see Rachmaninov’s Flight of the Bumblebee). These anxious calls steer the performance into a more dissonant place.
After this energetic build, Wooley suddenly removes his mouthpiece with one swift movement (and puts a contact microphone in the bell of his trumpet) and the energy collapses. Still maintaining his breath, he begins to build a new theme. This time, relaxing and percussive sounds of “wooooosh” followed by “thuddd.” I am now envisioning water drops after a storm, parking garage squeaks, the sounds of one’s brain within their skull. Now I’m thinking, “Can a trumpet really do this?” Combining blowing, valve pressing, sucking, with other abstract noises I start to hear something between the IDM beats of Aphex Twin and mouth sounds of Bobby McFerrin. This percussive section builds and Wooley starts to add subtle and distorted falsetto singing into his trumpet. Now, I’m hearing semi-trucks pass and someone singing in the shower.
For the final section of his performance, Wooley slowly arches his arms and trumpet to point up toward the ceiling. This ending crescendo mimics frenzied rhinoceri, racing motorcycle gangs, colliding glaciers, and speeding airplanes. I (and I imagine the whole audience as well) am in awe at his endurance and passion. After minutes of commanding breath and exhausting a whirlwind of sounds into the sky, it was suddenly over. Wooley snapped out of character, smiled to the audience, and we clapped in appreciation, yet I was preoccupied with trying to digest what I had just been hit with. Although very mesmerized by the skills and techniques used for such a marathon of a performance, I was even more captivated by the variety of dynamics, stories, and emotions. All in all, a great start to this season’s Sound Horizon!
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance. In anticipation to this season’s first Sound Horizon performance by contemporary trumpeter pioneer Nate Wooley, familiarize yourself with his creative approach to his instrument [...]
Nate Wooley. Photo: Peter Gannushkin
LISTENING MIX provides a musical preview for artists visiting the Walker. Combining their work with sounds from a variety of contextual sources, LISTENING MIX can be experienced before or after a performance.
In anticipation to this season’s first Sound Horizon performance by contemporary trumpeter pioneer Nate Wooley, familiarize yourself with his creative approach to his instrument and his music with this week’s LISTENING MIX. Wooley’s in-gallery sound explorations take place this Thursday (March 21) in 30-minute performances beginning at 6, 7, and 8 pm.
Wooley seeks to push his instrument and its historical forms to their limits. With full-bodied enunciations and a wide array of experimental intonations (hissing, buzzing, humming, and growling), Wooley communicates wandering, playful, and fearless melodies. Merging multiphonic vocalizations, virtuosic glissandos, and musical breathing, he simultaneously inhabits the worlds of jazz, new-music, and noise. For this music mix, I chose to feature songs from a few experimental American composers (Cage, Brown, Erb) who share Wooley’s interest in extended techniques. Although far away from jazz, I’ve also included musicians such as Björk and Bell Orchestre for their commitment to exploratory tones and timbres.
To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Penelope Freeh shares her perspective on Thursday night’s Live! The Realest MC by Kyle [...]
Photo by Ian Douglas
To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Penelope Freeh shares her perspective on Thursday night’s Live! The Realest MCby Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion.Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in Comments!
A golden child is hatched downstage right. Clad in sequins and lamé, Kyle Abraham is born. Shoulders articulate. Limbs elongate then shrink. Abraham tentatively balances on his sickled feet and, for a moment, he is grown.
Soon other dancers enter and athletically frame him. Their movements are clear-cut and concise. Everything is clean and visible. The oscillation from casual hip-hop to balls-to-the-wall contemporary dance is utterly discernable, readable.
Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima
There is so much unison dancing that when an image stops for a moment, like when a trio of men sightlessly hug/spoon and reach for one another’s hands, we sit up and take notice. There is depth of meaning here that extends beyond the virtuosity of high battements and multiple turns. This piece is about coming of age, being gay, pain and rage.
Video is projected on an upstage curtain of floor to ceiling white strips. Kids chase after someone over and over, a childhood nightmare played out larger than life and in color. The music is drone-like and full of static, at times too loud but to a point. Life is sometimes unbearable and dangerous. You want to cover your ears and hide away.
At about the halfway point this full-evening piece breaks apart. Humor finds its way in by way of a video of a southern white woman giving a hip-hop tutorial. Next is a voiced-over dance lesson all about the hips. Later two men physicalize the same dance instructions, one effeminately and the other hip-hop style. A beautiful juxtaposition and, I think, complement.
The evening is comprised of episodes rather than a super-narrative. This is elegantly done and with superb transitions. The lighting helps to carry this off, creating and defining sub-spaces within the larger one.
The end brought my only complaint: I wanted the last dance episode to be a solo for Abraham. After making himself so vulnerable in a section where he by turns talked tough and broke into childhood tears, I wanted just him and his sublime musicality. Alas, I loved it anyway.
From the dancers to the clever costumes, all were well cooked. For a work that drew upon the autobiography of Abraham, credit and generous dancing time was given to the dancers.
Most of us can say that at one point in our lives, we didn’t fit in. But how did we know that we didn’t fit in? Kyle Abraham knew because people told him so: My dad, he was a big basketball coach, and he sent me one summer to a basketball camp – which was [...]
Most of us can say that at one point in our lives, we didn’t fit in. But how did we know that we didn’t fit in? Kyle Abraham knew because people told him so:
My dad, he was a big basketball coach, and he sent me one summer to a basketball camp – which was probably one of the worst experiences of my life. I didn’t know that I didn’t fit in, but I was told on several occasions how much I did not fit in. I think there’s something about that in the story of Pinocchio, where I don’t really think he’s aware that people see him as different, he just thinks that he is this boy, he thinks he’s like everybody else. But then people tell him otherwise. And then he goes on this quest; he wants to be famous and do all these things and he does all these shows with the puppeteer. So, for me, I found all these really interesting parallels between that and my experience growing up in an urban community in Pittsburgh where it seems like if you put this kind of Hip Hop bravado on, you’ll be more accepted, or you won’t be called out as different. So that’s really what the show is referencing in relation to the story of Pinocchio. The soundtrack gives you this more industrial vibe, so, for me, it was thinking, “how can I make this story relate?” And, for me, it became less about this cobbler, or craftsman, making this wooden puppet, but more – maybe it’s happening in a factory, maybe it’s more industrial. Maybe you’re turning someone into a robot. Really devoid of feelings and emotion and just this false sense of celebrated masculinity.
Contributing to the ever-evolving dialogue on heteronormativity, in Hip Hop, sports, and beyond, Abraham’s newest work Live! The Realest MC infuses dance and storytelling in a journey of self-discovery. Questioning constructs around masculinity and identity, Abraham, like Pinocchio, only began searching for himself after others informed him that he was different. In both stories, though, it seems less about finding yourself, and more about understanding yourself while searching for others like you.
For some, sports and masculinity are synonymous. In football this past season, there seemed to be as many articles about homosexuality and players’ controversial (and also awesome) statements about marriage equality as there was coverage of the games. For Abraham, basketball became a place where his masculinity was questioned, where his “difference” was called out.
Speaking of heteronormativity and sports, remember Dennis Rodman? In the early 90s, Rodman challenged gender perceptions in the NBA, regularly painting his nails, dying his hair, and wearing women’s clothing. His public appearances garnered a lot of positive and negative attention, but no matter what the response, it got people talking. Twenty years later, that dialogue has evolved, hopefully progressing.
And since we’re talking about Dennis Rodman, Hip Hop, and gender roles/heteronormativity, here’s this little bit of awesome for you.
