An Integrated Composition Process Between Music and Dance Based on Improvisation

4

An Integrated Composition Process Between Music and Dance Based on Improvisation

Introduction

My relationship with dance began in the year 2000, when I was invited

to work as an accompanying musician to the classical ballet lessons of

instructor Priscilla Teixeira at the TEX dance studio. The chance to combine

my experience as a popular musician with the world of ballet was truly

revealing and opened up new musical horizons.

In intersecting popular Brazilian rhythms with body movements of the

ballet tradition, I found a fertile ground for experimentation. For example, I

noticed that the plié movement matched nicely with slow samba, since the

bass sound of the surdo drum played on the 2nd beat of the bar naturally

supported the downward movement of the body. Meanwhile, the piqué step

coincidentally emphasized the rhythmic accentuations of the baião musical

genre. Moreover, the variety of tones from the percussion instruments

enriched the experience of the bodies of the dancers in their space-time

relationship during class.

While working at the dance studio, I was invited by instructor Priscilla

Teixeira to compose the music for a dance solo she was creating, called Pai,

Filma Meu Mergulho (Dad, Shoot My Diving). The compositional process was

challenging. I applied what I had learned in film soundtrack courses, but unlike

a typical film, the choreography did not yet exist and would be developed as

the music was being composed. Neither before nor after, but in an integrated

manner.

These experiences with the world of dance encouraged me to research

deeper into the relationship between music and dance, and in order to do so,

some questions were raised as to the interaction between sound and

movement: how can music influence the movement of a dancer? How does

the process of translating sounds in the body take place? Is there indeed a

relationship between sound and movement?

5

The main objective of this research is to investigate, from a practical,

compositional and theoretical standpoint, the ways in which the worlds of

music and dance can interact within the context of artistic creation, based on

the notions of integration and improvisation.

The concept of integration refers to a creative process in which two or

more creators contribute – not necessarily together or simultaneously – to

develop their production in a collaborative manner. This perspective of

collaboration between the arts presupposes the sharing of ideas and

experiences between different creators, bringing unity and consistency to the

work as a whole. The product of the exchange of ideas and experiences

between musician and choreographer tends to generate a more

comprehensive approach that fits into another artistic reality. According to

composer Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961), a collaborator in several ballets

from the first half of the twentieth century, the relationship between music and

dance becomes “two factors in an integrated whole, which is neither music

nor dance, but a third thing” (quoted in Teck 2011, 60).

In her book, The Art of Making Dances (1959), Doris Humphrey (1895-

1958), a dance choreographer, professor and theorist who was contemporary

to Riegger, uses the term “wedding” (1987, 139) 1 to refer to the association

between dance and music. Humphrey’s ideas served as basis for the

understanding of this relationship from the perspective of the dancer. She

suggests that not all music is appropriate for dance and that the encounter

between dance and music occurs mainly in terms of rhythmic, melodic and

dramatic aspects. These aspects will be developed throughout our research. 2

Meanwhile, the theories and aesthetic values of British researcher

Stephanie Jordan3 were key to the development of the ideas guiding this

research. Jordan refers to the relationship between music and dance as

follows: “You can never think that it’s dance added to music, it’s a kind of

1 Doris Humphrey was possibly the first researcher to use the term “wedding.” 2 Russian choreographer George Ballanchine (1904-1983), who used a wide variety of music for his ballets – from TV comercial jingles to Webem and Xenakis pieces – admitted that he did not use certain types of music: “I wouldn’t use Beethoven overtures because they are made for listening. I wouldn’t know what to do with them” (Ballanchine quoted in Steinberg, 1980, 127).

3 Research Professor in Dance and Director of the Centre for Dance Research at the University of Roehampton in England.

6

interlocking.” From this perspective, music and dance can interact

harmoniously, sharing rhythms, subdivisions and accents, or they “can

oppose one another, creating tension between sound and motion” (Jordan4

2010).

From this angle, rhythm is a key factor in terms of the coherence

between sound and movement. Rhythm is not just a repeated and metrical

succession of events over time.5 For the purposes of this study, the definition of

rhythm is based on the idea of a unifying element that gives life to the work.

According do Riegger, rhythm can have two distinct connotations: “small time

units, such as half notes, quarter notes, etc., and larger groupings comparable

to phrases and more bound up with the concept of form, line or melody”

(quoted in Teck 2011, 60).

This way, from a global perspective, rhythm can be understood from its

structural character as the basis for setting repeated or varied events, both in

terms of music and choreography. If, generally speaking, in music there is no

form without repetition, re-exposure of themes and variations, in dance the

repetition of movement is a potential creative tool.

These ideas about the structuring role of rhythm are shared by art

philosopher Susanne Langer (1895-1985), for whom “the essence of rhythm

is to prepare a new event through the end of a previous event.” Thus, the last

phrase of a movement becomes the “condition for the emergence of another”

(1980, 133-134) – and that makes rhythm one of the main structural elements

in music. What characterizes a movement, then, is not its repetition but rather

its completeness.

In this work, the repetition or variation of movements takes on a

constructive function in the development of choreographic forms. And the way

in which this artistic tool contributes to an integrated creation is tied to

improvisation. The use of improvisation and undetermined processes wherein

chance influences the composition gradually gained importance throughout this

4 Jordan, S. Interview. London, 7/7/2010. Verbal Statement. 5 The basis for the fundamental character of rhythm can be found in the origins of music.

American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) believes that the origin of music “ocurred with the beat of a rhythm.” (1974, 36). This notion can be observed in our own experience of the world, to the extent that we, human beings, are “beings of rhythm” (Dottori 2005, 252) – we breath in a rhythm, we walk in a rhythm, we talk in a rhythm.

7

research. These methods were suggested by choreographer Eunice de

Oliveira, the main collaborator in this research, who, in a consistent manner,

selected the dancers to participate as performers-creators.

Drone, Dolcerino and Plano Primo were the three musical compositions

utilized to stimulate the body movements of the dancers during the rehearsals

at the dance studio.6 The latter was also used in the dance video Vagão, the

final product of this research. The music software Logic Pro 8 was used to

process and edit the piece, which adopted the poetic premise of incorporating

the indeterminate in composition. Through this poetics we make room for

improvisation in music and dance.

In this sense, in holding improvisation sessions in the studio, our main

goal was to make way for a more spontaneous experience between music

and dance. The sessions were filmed so that afterwards, through analyses

and reflections, we could reflect on the concepts we examined, since in this

work, “the concepts emerge from experience and not the other way around”

(Geiger 2008, 123). Four improvisation sessions were held with the dancers,

in which “free improvisation” gradually gave way to a more conscious

elaboration, given the concepts that were presented to the dancers.

Throughout the sessions, the dancers welcomed suggestions of concepts

from the musical world, which were grounded on similar ones from the

universe of dance.

While initially regarded as rehearsals in preparation for the creation of

the dance video Vagão, the improvisation sessions ended up taking a life of

their own and launching a process that sufficed in itself and reflected an

integrated creation between music and dance. In some of the sessions, the

concept of elastic forms created by composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965) was

used to interact in real time with the movements of the dancers.7

It is worth emphasizing the collaborative nature of this rich process

inside the dance studio, as the dancers, in responding to the impulses

coming from the music, were part of the creative process and narrowed the

gap between creator and performer, which made these filmed and

6 Located at the “Balé do Teatro Guaíra” in Curitiba, Brazil. 7 Some of these sessions will be displayed in their entirety or in edited format in the DVD attached to the dissertation.

8

documented improvisation sessions become truly integrated.

As for the creation of the dance video – the result of an intervention at

a Curitiba bus stop – the process was an even more collaborative effort,

since two other technical-creative processes were added to the music and

the dance: the capturing of images by Cesar Rafael per a shooting plan, and

the editing of images by Nat Ovelar, both supervised by Oliveira. Chance

was present in every level, as will be seen throughout this paper. Many of

the options and decisions that were made resulted from improvisations and

solutions that were sought due to the appearance of some circumstantial

problem in the studio or while shooting on location.

Ultimately, what we felt to be relevant from the onset of this research

was to be able to document and reflect on a creative process that was

collaborative and fraught with joint decision-making, thus enriching our

research with a truly collective work experience.

Thus, in view of our purpose to define the concept of integration

between music and dance – a concept that touches upon the notions of

autonomy and improvisation – we will dedicate the first and second chapters

to the task of identifying and defining ideas and parameters that are relevant

to such purpose. Historical references will be useful to elucidate and give

greater coherence to concepts – for example, the notion created by

choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage regarding the

autonomy of the arts, and how it altered paradigms regarding the relationship

between music and dance and subverted established performance patterns.

Chapter three will present the theoretical and practical aspects within

the field of musical composition that were used to support the creative

process. In this manner, Henry Cowbell’s notion of block-units was relevant to

adjust the music, in real time, to the needs of expression and form in dance.

The concept of formative units (clang) from composer James Tenney (1934-

2006), based on the laws of visual arts perception, was particularly important

in the demarcation of sound events, movement parts, and framing of images,

both in general and in the combination between the artistic areas in question.

Similarly, the indeterminacies and appropriations of external noises and

ambiance by John Cage, as well as the concept of gradual process and

discovery with tape loops by Steve Reich, were very important for this

9

research. These conceptions, made possible by using the recording studio as

a compositional tool, served to consolidate the musical composition through a

temporal and spatial perspective, particular to music itself.

Finally, we will conduct a reflection and analysis of the creative process

that took place in collaboration with choreographer Eunice Oliveira and the

Teatro Guaíra dancers who participated as performers-creators through

contact improvisation sessions.8 The final work, the "choreo-musical"

intervention in dance video format, entitled Vagão, as well as excerpts from

the improvisation sessions in the dance studio, were attached to the written

portion of this research.

1 Key Concepts

8 An expression used in dance to designate collective improvisations among dancers.

10

In order to define an “interlocking” relationship between music and dance,

there needs to be a clarification of certain concepts and parameters that were

identified – through bibliographical research, observations of videos and

observations and improvisations in the dance studio9 – as possible touch points

between these two arts. These working tools are justified particularly from a

practical standpoint, as they empirically serve to develop the process of a

creative dialogue between musician and dancers.

Among these concepts, the most relevant are musical visualization and

counterpoint, in view of how often they occur and how easily they lend

themselves to observation. Musical visualization takes place when there is an

equivalent interaction between components of music and dance, whereas

counterpoint occurs when there is opposition between these two materials.

This research also demonstrated the relevance of combining the

concept of counterpoint with other ideas such as, for instance, the concept of

autonomy between arts. In this sense, the disruption of the traditional barriers

of the scenic space of Modern Dance, as well as the incorporation of chance

and chance operations10 in musical and choreographical composition by John

Cage and Merce Cunningham, transformed the relationship between the

dance and music arts in a permanent way.

Apart from these two basic concepts, others were included our

repertoire of compositional tools, such as repetition and its extensions, the

canon and the echo. Composers and choreographers are known to use

repetition as a way to formally delineate their work and to create new

sound structures and movements, such as, for instance, in the process

initiated by American choreographer Trisha Brown in Accumulation (1972)

and in the music of Steve Reich (1936) in such works as Piano Phase,

which was choreographed later by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (1960).

9 During the research, several internet videos, DVDs, documentaries and dance performances were viewed as a basis for the research. (see references) 10 Procedures for random decisions in the composition process. “In order to allow chance to play a part in composition, the composer must decide what aspects of the work are to be decided by chance and what the range of probabilities of each aspect should be. For example, we could compose a piece for piano without dynamics and then apply the dynamics randomly by flipping coins or rolling dice” (Kostka 1999, 281).

11

It should be clear that these terms are not isolated and much less

exclusive, and they can coexist in an organic and complementary manner in

one same choreo-musical work. The choices made in this research have as

key focus the relationship between music and dance.

1.1 Music visualization or parallelism

...is the scientific translation into bodily action of the rhythmic, melodic and harmonious structure of a musical composition, without intention to in any way ‘interpret’ or reveal any hidden meaning apprehended by the dancers. (St. Denis, 1925 quoted quoted in Reynolds and McCormick 2003, 28) I must show them the music. Music must be seen! (Ballanchine quoted quoted in Jordan 2000, xiv)

At the beginning of the twentieth century the art of dance begins to

break free from the rigid standards of classical ballet. The precursors of these

changes, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and Doris Humphrey

begin to question and modify traditional forms of dancing. The costumes,

themes, the utilization of space, and especially the relationship with music

started to be seen in a new way, and as such, were later challenged.

Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), considered the main precursor of

Modern Dance, initiated the “revolution” in dance. Influenced by values from

ancient Greece, Duncan stressed that the purpose of dance was to express

true feelings and not just “athletic” or “virtuoso” classical ballet movements.

Through her “dance improvisation” (Mendes 1987, 55), “Duncan suggested

that she ‘translated’ music into dance or presented the spirit of the music”

(Jordan 2000, 23). Within this context, however, the music was more of a

starting point for creating the choreography.

This concept of “interpreting” the music through the body in motion,

based on an experience of empirical association, of patterns of similar

images, served as influence and inspiration for dancers and choreographers

in Europe and the United States. American dancers, choreographers and

professors Ted Shawn (1891-1972) and Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) were

probably the first to use the term musical visualization to refer to a form of

representation through analogies between music and dance, i.e., the musical

12

material has its corresponding interpretation in the body movements of the

dancers.

St. Denis wished to “give physical substance to sounds” (quoted in

Reynolds and McCormick 2003, 28) through this design - melodic lines,

canons and imitations of an Invention of J. S. Bach, for example, became

“visible” through the movements of the dancers, creating a sort of parallelism.

According to Katherine Teck in the book Making Music for Modern Dance

(2011), “the formal structure of the music would be reflected in the patterns of

the dance" (2011, 4). This technique became a benchmark throughout the

first decades of the twentieth century and is still used by several

choreographers.

Under Shawn’s guidance and orientation, the Denishawn Dance

Company and School was created. St. Denis, company co-founder,

conceived the relationship between dance and music as follows:

Beautiful, natural and noble movement can never be trained and fixed in art forms and expressed in supreme works of the dance until the musical compositions offer a sympathetic parallel to the capacity of the human body. (quoted in Murmaw and Sherman 1981, 95)

This quest for a “parallel reciprocity” between music and body

movement can also be found in the rhythmic gymnastics created by Swiss

composer and educator Jacques Dalcroze (1865-1950), called Eurhythmics.

“His method was not intended as dance training but rather as a way of using

natural movements of the body to experience musical ingredients and

relationships” (Teck 2011, 6). Dalcroze believed that body movement was the

result of a nervous reaction of the muscle to music stimuli (Godinho 2006,

357). Through exercises in which all parts of the body were set in motion,

Dalcroze created a music education system that relied on the mechanical

transposition of music into the body.

In this sense, the “structural equivalences” between music and dance

functioned as follows: intensity of sound = muscular dynamics; timbre =

position and direction of the movements in space; tone = diversity of corporal

forms (the sexes); melody = continuous succession of isolated movements;

counterpoint = opposition of movements, among others (Dalcroze 1921

13

quoted quoted in Jordan 2000, 15).

Apart from influencing the precursors of modern American dance,

Eurhythmics, also known as Gymnastique Rhythmique,11 had extensive

repercussion in Europe, even influencing works such as Jeux (1912) and Le

Sacre du Printemps (1913),12 with music by Claude Debussy and Igor

Stravinsky, respectively, premiered by the ballet company Ballets Russes and

directed by Diaghilev, who overcame the classical traditional of dance in Paris

in the early twentieth century.

According to choreographer Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972), sister to

dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), it was possible to hear

music through the eyes: “if you would close your ears you could still hear the

music – you could see the music.” (1963 quoted in Jordan 2000, 45). Although

in some later statements Nijinska rejected the rigidity of Dalcroze’s technique in

favor of more free solutions, thus refusing to continue "imitating the complicated

and asymmetrical rhythms and measures of Stravinsky’s music" (1963/1974

quoted in Jordan 2000, 45), the choreographer believed in the concept of unity

and complementarity of the parts.

In turn, Russian choreographer and classic ballet theorist Feodor

Lopukhov (1886-1973) – another follower of the idea of musical visualization –

stated that “choreography and music are of equal importance” (2002, 136).

This statement is linked to the new consciousness that surfaced at the time,

namely, that dance should not be of service to music.13 But the choreographer

felt that there lacked competent professionals to implement the integration

between the arts.

In his reflections, Lopukhov suggests certain "ground rules" to connect

music and dance:

For example, a musical theme that suggests upward flight cannot

11 (Godinho 2006, 357) 12 “Through his student Marie Lambert, who worked in Jeux and Sacre with Nijinsky” (Reynolds and McCormick 2003, 79). 13 Lopukhov reflects the concern of choreographers and dancers regarding the “servile” condition of dance in relation to music. At a later moment, some choreographers dismissed music altogether and danced in silence.

14

be combined with a choreographic theme that suggests crawling, even if the two themes are identical in terms of rhythm. There must be a unit of the musical and choreographic forms. Emotional climaxes in the dance must coincide with emotional climaxes in the music. The curve of the dance must correspond to the curve of the music. The color of the dance must match the colors of the orchestration. Major keys must be equated with en dehors and minor with en dedans. Key changes must be reproduced choreographically. (Lopukhov 2002, 16)

This quote supposedly shows that the author does not delve into the

content in question. In this context the choreographer does not clarify the use

of the fundamental musical concepts such as melody, dynamics, timbre and

harmony. When Lopukhov talks about the colors in dance, is he referring to

costumes and scenery? And how is this musically played out so as to create

analogies between dance and music?14

In terms of keys, we can understand Lopukhov’s reasoning in matching

major keys to a feeling of happiness and a minor key to that of sadness. This

way, the more exuberant major keys would reflect an outward movement while

the more melancholic minor keys would be represented by an inward movement.

While Lopukhov intended to integrate music and dance, the precursors

of modern dance aimed to modernize dance altogether. The performances

created by the Denishawn Company combined the ideas of musical

visualization with the techniques of ethnic dance and classical ballet and were

referred to by its creators as the “dance of the future” (Mendes 1987, 55).

Accordingly, a music of the future had to be composed for this new type of

dance, but in practice, a large part of the musical visualizations were

performed to a classical repertoire, especially in the beginning. (Jordan 1984,

45).

According to Jordan, creating a choreography based on the music of

the “great masters” facilitates the task of the choreographer. “Now that we

are in the age of recording there is much available for people to buy [...]

When you work with something already made, you get to know it better [...]

14 Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) claimed that tones suggested colors, and also Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) based much of his work on the mystic chord that related notes and colors. All this is without mentioning Frederick Bentham’s 1934 Light Console and the color organ of Adrian Bernard, who in 1926 published the book Colour Music: The Art of Light (Caznok, 2008, p. 40-48). Painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) pointed out that “In music, a light blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello, a still darker a thunderous double bass and the darkest blue of all-an organ (Kandinsky 2006, 76).

15

you can analyze it.” (Jordan 2010, verbal information) This is perhaps why

Duncan used music from the “great masters” of the past: not because she

felt she could express the beauty of their works, but rather because she

“hoped to recover the natural cadences of human movements which have

been lost for centuries” (1928 quoted in Jordan 2000, 17).15

The Denishawn Company would later commission original music from

American composers. Louis Horst (1884-1964), composer and conductor,16

was the company’s musical director for ten years. During this period, he

collaborated in many shows and later taught at various dance schools

(Reynolds and McCormick 2003, 29).

Horst claimed that the revolt led by exponents of Modern Dance

against Classical Ballet had been informal and quite undemanding,

characterized by “pure emotional improvisation on stage” and that, without

any concern for form, the choreographer hardly kept it from becoming a

“selfish self expression.” In spite of the emphasis on structure and clarity, the

composer demanded that the studies on movement produced by his/her

students begin with “an emotional response to the music” (quoted in Reynolds

and McCormick 2003, 320).

In his choreography composition classes, Horst used forms and

structures that were specific to the field of music; such a use was justified by

the lack of literature specific to dance at the time. Horst therefore encouraged

his students to pick a movement theme that was tied to the character of the

music and to then develop it through “specific guidelines”:

There was no objection to students improvising in order to find a theme, but once it was selected, improvisation had to stop. The student then composed, following precise stipulations as to body directions, the ‘pathways’ a movement sequence could travel, the number of gestures involved, and the use of such formal devices as repetition, rhythmic variation, inversion and counterpoint.” (Reynolds and McCormick 2003, 320)

15 Duncan regarded dance as a “visible embodiment of music.” Many critics at the time, however, held that “she didn’t really comprehend the music that she danced to, that she interpeted it badly and violated it.” (Langer 1980, 178-179).Cowell, in turn, asserts that by using compositions from the “great masters”, Duncan’s dance ended up being overshadowed by the music (1934 quoted in Miller 2002, 3). 16 Horst would later be the most important influence in choreographer Martha Graham’s (1894-1991) career.

16

Apart from the music serving as the vital structure for the dance, in

accentuating, limiting and further developing the choreography, Horst viewed

the body of the dancer as a “plastic instrument” and, for him, the music was

the tool that could discipline this instrument (1936 quoted in Teck 2011, 50).

Despite the greater concern to “discipline the instrument of the dance,” which

he referred to as “the mind of the muscle,” Horst was also interested in

“widening vocabularies and evoking the kind of interior response that, if

convincingly translated into motion, is the essence of theatrical projection”


Another contributor to the Denishawn Company was American cellist

and composer Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961). Riegger was often asked to

write music for dances that had already been fully choreographed.

In addressing the relationship between music and dance, Riegger

raises the following question in his 1934 article, Synthesizing Music and the

Dance: “is it function of the dance to interpret the music or of the music to

accompany the dance?” (quoted in Teck 2011, 59) Based on his own

experience, the composer argues that the best solution is to keep “dance as a

vehicle for the interpretation of music.” He continues:

And at the same time, the music as a tonal portrait of rhythms and moods of the dance, both interconnected to form an organic unity that is neither pure choreography nor pure music, nor the sum of both, but rather a fusion into something else to which there is no name. (quoted in Teck 2011, 61)

Riegger was one of the first to write about the “third thing” conceived as

an organic unity that comes into being when music and dance are placed side

by side, and he believed that the role of the composer was to write music “on

equal footing, creatively speaking, with the dance; in other words, complete in

all its elements” (quoted in Teck 2011, 60). This notion of the individual

completeness of the parts – in this case the arts of music and dance – would

supposedly result in an interdependence between them.

In this respect, the composer is in line with Jordan’s ideas. Jordan

claims that “Music and dance are seen as interactive, interdependent

components or voices, each working upon the other, so that the whole

17

experience becomes more than the sum of its parts” (2000, ix). This

“interlocking” of music and dance, however, does not necessarily mean a

faithful copy, a translation.

In his article, Music and Action, composer and former Royal Ballet

musical director Constant Lambert criticizes that “the choreographer is

debasing his art if he thus makes dancing a mere visual exposé of the music.

The dance should not be a translation of the music but an interpretation of it”

(quoted in Steinberg 1980, 136).

Even though choreographers of the twentieth century subscribed to the

notion of equivalence, of parallelism between music and dance, it is worth

questioning how far is it really possible to visually transpose certain musical

structures to dance. Jordan states that this way of conceiving “composition” is

incomplete. She notes that Shawn’s choreographies only “associated

movements to musical ideas.” She explains: “On several occasions near the

end a curious jerky raising of the arms corresponds to the pitch levels and

rhythmic pattern of the music, but most of the time Shawn chooses simply to

associate dance ideas with musical ideas. Bars of sixteenth notes in either

part often accompany balances; two extended trills accompany quick turns in

place with the arms wrapped loosely around the body; a cadential figure with

dotted rhythm in the top line gives rise to a rapid end-of-phrase assemble

soutenu en tournant. Appropriately, the dancers move with a staccato quality,

arresting their movement during musical rests; but associations of ideas are

not entirely consistent, and some musical ideas are treated in several different

ways” (1984, 43). Thus, neither the treatment of the musical ideas nor

associations of ideas are entirely consistent.

American composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965) also criticizes musical

visualizations, which he referred to as “interpretive dances” (quoted in Miller

2002, 3). Cowell, who accompanied dance lessons on the piano and

collaborated with various ballets, claimed that a lack of musical understanding

contributed to the appearance of patterns of movements in dance. In his own

words: “in almost no instance was the music really interpreted. The

interpretative dances...were usually just about alike, no matter what the

music...” (quoted in Miller 2002, 3).

18

The observations by Jordan and Cowell lead us to conclude that

“parallel reciprocity” should not be a rigid notion. If all of the accents, melodic

phrases, changes in timbre and the texture of the music were to be faithfully

“reproduced” in the dance, this association would lead to a monotonous form

without any contrasts.

This “permanent pleonasm” (Martin 2007, 122) effect between music

and dance was dubbed Mickey Mousing (Carrasco17 2011). The expression is

used in dance to describe choreographies or works in which all of the

movements are copiously “wed” to the music, thereby at times even

conferring upon the choreography a somewhat comical side. Lambert argues

that the choreography “should not slavishly imitate the musical texture but

should add a counter-subject of its own” (quoted in Steinberg 1980, 137).

Indeed, a more creative approach can be reached by emphasizing

certain musical passages through the imitation of certain accents in the music.

In a recent choreography for Bach’s Concerto Italiano, American

choreographer Mark Morris (1956) made use of this technique. In certain

moments, the dancers move according to the musical accents while in others

these associations do not occur. Even though Morris often held the score in

his hands during rehearsal, he states that “the actual representation of black

dots on white paper done as dancing doesn’t work” (2000, video).

According to Jordan, “Morris has no intention of emphasizing all of the

musical accents in the dance, and by picking out some accents and not all, he

highlights those movements, he makes you hear those chosen movements

like structural points; they become truly important.” (2010, verbal information)

Within this perspective established by Morris, there are moments within the

entirety of the work in which music and dance fit together and complete one

another. There is therefore a chance to go beyond the technique of musical

visualization and to offer the viewer and those involved the creation of a “third

thing,” which is more than the sum of its parts and is the product of the

dynamic and complementary relationship between the arts.

17 An expression possibly coined by Hollywood film producer David O. Selznick (1902-1965) when criticizing Max Steiner’s (1888-1971) soundtrack to the movie King Kong (1933). (Carrasco, C. “A dupla articulação da trilha musical no audiovisual no exemplo da sequência da valsa “O Danúbio Azul” em “2001 Uma Odisséia no Espaço”” Lecture given at the twenty-first Anppom Congress, Uberlânda, 08/23/2011).

19

Morris’ concept that music and dance are complementary and have a

dynamic relationship to form a whole between the two is in dialogue with the

essentially musical work of Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De

Keersmaeker (1960), “in which music truly converses with dance” (Guisgand18

2011). De Keersmaeker describes her dance as follows:

When I dance, normally, it has to be all-embracing. This is the way I do things. My taste for big formalizations works like this – I merge a vibrant collection of ideas into one fertile whole. And make it all resonate, make it expressive, polish it against the music. (De Keersmaeker 2010, 8)

De Keersmaeker was initially known for her choreography of minimalist

emphasis, Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich (1982), but the

musical horizon of her pieces spans eras and styles ranging from Mozart and

Bach to Schoenberg, Webern, Bartok and Ligeti, through the Beatles and,

most recently, Ars Nova music, from the second half of the fourteenth century.

In an interview that was included in the playbill for the show En Atendant

(2010), the choreographer describes her more recent work as follows:

a relationship of fusion and maximum rhetorical readability! Some passages have been choreographed one step at a time, note by note, music in hand... With enormous patience, on the part of both dancers and musicians, we are starting from scratch. One note, one step! One voice – one dancer! The watchword: ‘my walking is my dancing.” (De Keersmaeker 2010, 9)

If in De Keersmaeker’s work music plays a central role and is a starting

point, in the theater-dance of German choreographer Pina Bausch (1940-

2009), “music only enters the picture after the scenes have been completed; it

is more of an additional element, such as scenery and lighting, which add to

the work of the dancers.” While both worked towards “complete

incorporation,” in Bausch’s case “every type of movement, be it sophisticated

or banal, can be integrated into the language of dance, and every type of

music fits – from Schubert to Edith Piaf, from Handel to the tango and Duke

Ellington” (Nestrovski and Bogéa 2000, 6).

18 Guisgand, P. Ce que le musicien apporte au chercheur en danse. Lecture given at the conference: Dialogues en movemnet. Montreal, 02/18/2011.

20

Dancer and instructor Doris Humphrey, one of Denishawn Company’s

main collaborators, and the only one apart from its founders to choreograph

dances for the group’s repertoire, stressed that any “sound ambiences” can

be used in dance, including those specific to concrete music.

For Humphrey, the choice of music for a particular choreography is

subject to the limitations and special attributes of the art of dance, “a

speechless art, of the physical body, always expressed in its own way of

human beings, no matter how abstract" (1987, 132). This “speechless” quality

of the body movement, according to Humphrey, tends to act on the body and

mind of the spectator, to move the spectator, who is thus led to identify

him/herself with the dance.

This identification of the body of the spectator with the body on stage

happens mainly because of the three-dimensional aspect of dance and the

kinesthetic transfer19 between dancers and audience. According to

choreographer Colleen Thomas: “it’s not only [...] the action of the body, it’s also

the visceral feeling of it [...] you can feel it in your own body watching [the dance]”

(quoted in Kloppenberg 2010, 200), and therein lies the power of dance. What

this research aims to demonstrate, therefore, is that when body movement is

associated with music, the perceptual field expands and creates other

opportunities for expression by the performer and a broader horizon for an

identification of the audience.

After leaving the Denishawn Company, Humphrey stopped using the

term musical visualization for her creations. Humphrey felt that “the dance

should have something to say for itself and a mere visualization of the music

isn’t a good enough justification for bringing a choreography to life” (1987,

127). Indeed, Jordan mentions that Humphrey soon began to explore more

independent and interesting relationships with music (1984, 46).

19 Cognitive neuroscientists have demonstrated that viewing movements triggers “mirror neurons” in the brain that produce visceral, emotional responses. This physical electricity is how dance –quite literally – touches audiences (Kloppenberg 2010, 199).

21

1.2 Counterpoint

...shall the composer regard the dance which has been conceived without music in the light of a set form, for which he is to create a background or embellishment, or as one of two factors in an integrated whole, which is neither music nor dance but a third thing? (Rieger 1934 quoted in Teck 2011, 60) ...choreography which interprets a fugue in the Dalcroze manner is merely a species of choreographical “vamping”, far more harmonic than contrapuntal in feeling. (Lambert quoted in Steinberg 1980, 137)

Just as dance and music can work in parallel and in line with one

another, they can also create an opposition to one another, conventionally

called counterpoint. 20 In music, counterpoint, among other meanings, refers

to a composition technique initiated in the fourteenth century in which two or

more melodic lines are executed simultaneously, one “against” the other.

The counterpoint technique came as a natural response to the

limitations of the musical visualization technique in dance performances, and

it attends to the needs of choreographers and composers to create more

interesting and contrasting passages between the two arts. Furthermore, the

counterpoint technique somewhat solves the issue of hierarchy between the

arts, as both then become equal in “importance.”

Henry Cowell, perhaps the first composer to comment on the subject in

his article How Music and Dance Relate (1934), refers to the creation of a

contrapuntal relationship between music and dance in the following terms:

“the music rises to its point of interest when the dance becomes quiescent,

and then the music dies down in interest while the dance rises” (quoted in

Miller 2002, 3). This way, instead of the music providing a “floor” for the

dancers, the two arts work in counterpoint, in opposition. 21

Cowell believed that the solution for an equal playing field between

music and dance rested in formal planning, in big structures. In addition to

advocating the use of counterpoint between music and dance, the composer

had already been seeking a more dynamic musical structure that could better

20 The terms stems from the latin, contrapunctum, “note-against-note.” 21 “Henry Cowell composed numerous works for contemporaries in the modern dance world (Doris Humphrey, Charles Wiedman, Martha Graham, ...), turning a potentially dreary job in an opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange of aesthetic ideas“ (Miller 2002, 2).

22

accommodate choreographies. During the 1930s, these choreographies

started being created before the music, thus becoming more autonomous:

Then came various ‘modern’ ideas. Nearly all of these, as far as music is concerned, have risen from the natural and correct desire of the dance to be independent and not reliant on the music for its form and content. There have been dances without any music or sound. There have been dances to percussion sound only. There have been attempts to write music in the studio at the same moment as dance is being invented. There have been dances composed first, after which music was written for them. This reverses the idea that the dance should be made to the music. (Cowell quoted in Teck 2011, 87)

Cowell noticed that a large portion of the choreographic works

emerged from “repeated improvisation” in the dance studio and thus began to

believe that in order to accommodate increasingly autonomous

choreographies, the musical structure of the compositions had to be more

flexible, more “elastic” (Miller 2002, 4).

Therefore, apart from reflecting a natural need for those working with

music and dance, the counterpoint technique – used by Cowell and other

composers and choreographers at the time – derived, in part, from formal

liberties that were being put into practice not only in music but especially in

dance.

Another consequence of the need for dance to become less dependent

on music was the increasingly frequent use of percussion instruments to

accompany dance lessons and performances. The use of percussion

combined the composers’ willingness to use new musical materials with the

choreographers’ “aim to ensure the primacy of dance.”

Besides Cowell, composer John Cage (1912-1992) – choreographer

Merce Cunningham’s (1919-2009) main collaborator – developed several

dance-related works using percussion instruments and prepared piano.22 In

his early work, “Cage would write the accompaniment for a dance after the

choreography was completed. The dancers would give him the ‘measures’ of

the dance: so many bars of 4/4 meter followed by so many bars of 5/4, and so

22 A procedure in which nails, screws, rubbers and other objects were inserted into the strings of the piano. This procedure modifies the sound and tuning of the notes, creating harmonics that are “foreign” to the original sonority of the instrument, like a “miniature percussion orchestra” (Pritchett 1995, 23).

23

on. Cage would then write to fit these phrase lengths. Thus, his compositional

structure was completely dictated by the choreography – a situation he found

inacceptable” (Pritchett 1995, 13-14).

Cage was critical of the concept of music and dance being “identical"

and questioned the “non-constructive” use of percussion by choreographers.

According to the composer, the choreographers would follow the rhythms of

their own movements and “accentuate and punctuate these movements with

percussion instruments, but they did not give the sound its own special role in

the composition as a whole.” For Cage, the music should be “more than

accompaniment” and "an integral part of the dance” (1973, 87).

All of these elements show how challenging the creative process of

approaching the two arts can be. In response to this challenge, Cowell

created an elastic musical form that suited the irregularities of dance, and

Cage, with the support of Cunningham, sought to create rhythmic structures

that were detached from body movements.

Doris Humphrey, one of the first choreographers to make use of

counterpoint between music and dance, mentions that in a ballet conceived

with music by Aaron Copeland, she found it difficult to create her

choreography due to the music’s long introduction, slow tempo and

melancholic character. In order to add a more dramatic character to her

dance, Humphrey did not hesitate to “introduce some fast movement totally

against the rhythm and dynamics of the music. This kept the narrative alive”

(1987, 135-136).

While for Humphrey the use of counterpoint, of tension, keeps the

“narrative alive,” for Jordan this usage suggests an adversarial relationship in

which a certain quality or sentiment is magnified or emphasized during the

performance.

Let’s look at the example below:

What happens if you have a serious and pompous piece of music? ...And then someone is being clownish, funny. The dancer is funny and the music is pompous, ok, what does it mean? You’ve got two different things and each by themselves would be quite different from when they are put together when they are together that is a sense of tension, opposition, irony, like they pull against each other. The funny person is looking even more sort of funny, more ridiculous. (Jordan 2010, verbal information)

24

This way of magnifying a certain quality or given “information” is based

on man's ability to perceive and seek meaning in the things of the world. We

absorb a piece of information in relation to another, previous one, and if these

do not agree in logical terms we detect a “problem.” Ideas that contradict one

another and do not harmonize end up generating a third idea, a product of the

first two, resulting in a dynamics of contrast and juxtaposition between the

parts.

This vision of Jordan’s takes us to film theory, particularly the editing

technique associated with Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948).

Eisenstein notes that “two pieces of film of any kind, when placed together,

inevitably create a new concept, a new quality that arises from the

juxtaposition” (2002, 14). According to the filmmaker, editing is not a peculiar

characteristic of film or dance but rather of the human being; something

happens in the “viewer's mind” (17) when dealing with the juxtaposition of two

objects, two ideas, two events or two arts, as in the case of Humphrey’s post-

Denishawn choreographies.

Apart from her contribution in using the technique of counterpoint

between music and dance, in The Art Of Making Dances, Doris Humphrey

emphasizes three “appropriate areas” to strategically combine dance and

music: “melodic, rhythmic and dramatic.” Humphrey justified the choice of

these parameters given their proximity to the human body:

[...] melody, through its original source in the breath and the voice; metric rhythm, through the change of weight of the feet and the pulse; dramatic sound, through the enormous range of emotion, always accompanied by a physical reaction. (1987, 132)

Other choreographers and musicians also rely on these construction

factors, in isolation or combined, to give meaning to their work. Langer’s

concept of rhythm, discussed earlier in the introduction, is based on the role of

rhythm in structuring the music. “The essence of rhythm is to prepare a new

event at the end of a previous event” (1980, 133), explains the philosopher, so

that if the end of an event becomes a condition for the emergence of a new

event, then rhythm becomes responsible for connecting the various parts or

sections of a piece, through which new tensions are produced. Rhythm thus

25

influences the alternations between moments of greater or lesser drama in the

harmony.

Langer’s view reminds us of the ideas of Varèse, for whom rhythm is

the element that generates stability and form to music.23 Meanwhile,

composer Wallingford Riegger turns his attention to aspects that relate to

notions of time that coexist in the music:

It would be well to define ‘rhythm’, which could have two fairly distinct connotations: small time units, such as half notes, quarter notes, etc., and larger groupings comparable to phrases and more bound up with the concept of form, line or melody. (quoted in Teck 2011 60)

Riegger thus distinguishes between the two coexisting notions of time: the

metric rhythm cited by Humphrey, and Varèse and Langer’s rhythm as a

structuring element.

In this respect, dance critic Deborah Jowitt comments that

choreographer Martha Graham (1894-1991), for example, as time went by

became interested in what is conventionally called “dramatic rhythm rather

than a foot rhythm” (2005, 36). These expressions are used to differentiate

the rhythm of the whole – the “larger groupings” of a dance performance –

from the metric rhythm – the rhythm of beats. 24

Riegger, in turn, dialogues with Cowell in prioritizing the use of “larger

forms” to generate a greater autonomy between the arts in question and

beauty in the movements created by the dancers:

A supreme example of this method was shown in the choreographic presentation of Varèse Integrales by Martha Graham. Here the stacatto rhythms of the percussion instruments were by no means always portrayed on the stage, but rather the slow moving groups of dancers created lines of larger flowing rhythms – dance melodies – of inexpressible beauty and power. (quoted in Teck 2011, 60-61)

23 According to composer Edgard Varèse (1883-1965), “rhythm derives from the simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that intervene at calculated, but not regular time lapses” (Varese and Wen-Chung 1966, 15). 24 According to Jowitt, “Some of the later scores, in many places, are not rhythmically guided but try to create an aural landscape of emotion that she could respond to or that she had given the composer” (2005, 36).

26

Janet Eilber, a former dancer with Graham’s company, complements

this notion of opposition, describing the relationship between

choreographer and music as follows:

Martha really taught us that we were the central force of her choreographic choices. The music was meant to frame us and we were to rub up against it and be off the beat and really consider it as a partner. (2005, 36)

These rhythmic-melodic associations between music and dance via

opposition or alternation of contrasting rhythms and repeated figures, despite

being a challenge for the dancers, enrich the structure of a choreo-musical

piece, while also giving the dance “autonomy of form and content” (Cowell

quoted in Miller 2002, 4).

Given these observations, one can therefore note how the

“appropriate areas” for combining music and dance, as highlighted by

Humphrey, communicate: the melodic and rhythmic aspects are directly linked

and both feed into the creation of dramatic aspects.

The concept of melody, however, implies the notion of musical phrase.

For example, in the video Falling Down Stairs (1998), in which the

choreographer Mark Morris collaborates with violinist Yo-Yo Ma (1955), Morris

leverages the descending melodic phrasing of J. S. Bach’s music Suite nº 3

for cello as inspiration for a “falling” movement of the dancers at the opening

of the piece, as described below:

WelI, this is kind of horrible but I had something that was almost like a dream [...] I was starting to think about this piece, I saw a horrible accident which was: one of my dancers had a terrible fall down the stairs, exactly like na na na... [Humming the descending melody of the opening of Suite nº 3]. (1998, video)

This description of Morris’s creative process reflects the relationship

between body movement and melodies. The music, for Morris, serves as

inspiration for his choreography, “it’s mostly a tone thing, an ambience, a

feeling actually a deep feeling” (Morris 1998, video). While Morris's work is

characterized by the direct influence of music in choreography, it is worth

mentioning that it is also possible to create counterpoints in pitch; i.e.,

27

downward movements in dance can contrast with ascending melodic phrases

in the music, creating tension and dramatic appeal.

1.3 Repetition, canon and echo

In music, some expressions are used to refer to repetition, such as, for

instance, ostinato.25 The term refers to the obstinate repetition of a piece of

music for some time. These repetitions are generally based on a pattern and

create a feeling of tension, as if we were waiting for a new contrasting event.

While we feel pleasure in “perceiving” information already known to us, we

keep waiting for a change, a contrast. Indeed, the section following the

ostinato ends up assuming a character of relaxation and dissolving the

tension built up during the ostinato.

For pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen, the ostinato feature is

“ambiguous” in terms of movement:

An ostinato creates small-scale motion, but since it remains unchanged, it prevents any large harmonic movement. Nevertheless, an ostinato creates instability and contributes to the larger rhythm through the tension that comes from insistent repetition. (1996, 47)

The insistent repetition thus keeps changing the immanent nature of a

particular idea, the “affect” of a passage is transformed, its meaning changes. In

her work, Accumulation (1972), choreographer Trisha Brown, one of the leading

exponents of the Judson Dance Theatre group, uses repetition in a rigid manner

and with predetermined movements. The “repetition has the effect of blurring the

image, much as a word repeated over and over again loses its original meaning

– ocean becoming notion, etc.” (quoted in Vergine 2007, 57).

Quoted in Brown’s work, repetition is essential to the creation of

movement:

I used a simple form which was to make 1 movement, repeat it several times and add 2, repeat 1 and 2 several times and add 3, then 4, etc. (1976 quoted quoted in Brown, Mindlin, and Woodford 1998, 183-184)

25 The word ostinato is of Italian origin and means obstinate, stubborn (Polito 2008, 166).

28

Thus, the repetitions of movement parts, referred to as “cells” in ballet,

serve as raw material for the creation of broader movements. Similarly, in

music the creation of a melodic line or phrase may be the result of repetitions

or variations of an initial motif.

According to dance theorist, Helena Katz,26 “the repetition of the new

stimulus aims to promote another rearrangement for motor actions that have

already been mastered” (quoted in Soter and Pereira 1998, 22-23). Repetition

in dance can therefore bring new stimuli to the dancer and encourage

pioneering movements in conjunction with the “repertoire” of the dancer.

Movement repetition is a major feature of the work of German

choreographer Pina Bausch (1940-2009). In an article published in the Folha

de São Paulo titled “O Gesto Essencial” (“The Essential Gesture”) (2000), art

theorist Arthur Nestrovski and dancer Agnes Bogéa characterized Bausch's

work as follows:

In Bausch’s work, two formal principles are particularly relevant: collage, which combines several scenes without any transition, and repetition, of both the scenes and the movement within the scenes. The effect may be similar to a word being repeated several times: it becomes something strange, on the edge of absurdity. (2000, 6)

Within this context, it is important to highlight, from a structural point of

view, the relationship that repetition has with the greater rhythm of a piece, as

Rosen stresses. It is through repetition and its opposite – through their

difference – that the structures of music and dance are formed. It is precisely

these body and sound forms that, through repetition and alternation, generate

consistency in a work of art.

In the music of Steve Reich, for example, repetition plays a structuring

role. The gradual process of his compositions when "triggered“ by magnetic

tape or traditional instruments generate ostinatos that occasionally phase out

26 Professor and Ph.D. in the PUC/SP Department of Graduate Studies in Communications and Semiotics, coordinator for the Center of Studies in Dance, also at PUC/SP, and dance critic for the O Estado de São Paulo newspaper. .

29

and create sub-melodies as byproducts of the process. According to Reich,

this is a process that is responsible for both the musical material and the

structure of the work (2002, 20).

Reich’s collaboration is well known, as is the mutual influence

between his work and that of other artists, especially visual artists, such as

Richard Serra and Sol LeWitt. In addition to his dialogue with the visual arts,

Reich had his compositions used by various choreographers, notably Anne

Teresa De Keersmaeker (1960).27 In Fase, four movements to the music of

Steve Reich (1982), the choreographer chooses to use few movements in the

dance – raw movement (Noisette 2010, 208) – and the incessant repetition of

those few movements, such as spins and arm movements. And by varying the

dynamics of these movements – in which different energy levels affect the

bodies and with gestures ranging from “high intensity to slackness” – De

Keersmaeker’s ability to insert emotional content into repetitive structures

becomes apparent and ends up being the main feature in her dance


IMAGE 1 – FASE, FOUR MOVEMENTS TO THE MUSIC OF STEVE REICH

SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXiHD4LmiE

27 This is how Reich describes his reaction after attending the performance of Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich (1982): “I have never seen such a revelatory choreography done to my music. She [De Keersmaeker] knew precisely what my early pieces were about [...] The carefully detailed use of lighting right at the start in Piano Phase creates overlapping shadows that accentuate the repetitive motions that slowly move in and out of phase” (2002, 214).

30

In the above image, the shadow reflected on the wall, generating

reflections of other dancers, has the role of representing in the dance the sub-

melodies created through the music.

As an extension to the idea of repetition, the concept of canon28 can

also be seen as a type of repetition, albeit a repetition that occurs with a

certain delay. The canon is a contrapuntal technique that refers to the

fourteenth century, and, “relatively little used in the century and a half after

Bach, it once more became popular among composers of the twentieth

century” (Kostka 1999, 149). In dance, the canon is present in several

classical and modern-contemporary works.

The concept of echo, introduced by Stephanie Jordan29, refers to a

relationship of “anticipation” between the arts. For example, dancers raise

and lower their bodies successively while the music sounds “static”,

accompanied by long notes without rhythmic or pitch variation; the

dancers then become static, without changes in motion, while the music

starts to alternate between upward and downward movements, such as

what the dance had just presented, as if the dance had anticipated what

would happen next in the music, as a complement.

28 “The strictest form of contrapuntal imitation, em which the poliphony derives from a single melodic line, through imitation at regular intervals or variations in pitch or tempo” (Sadie 1994, 163). 29 (2010, Verbal information)

31

2 Improvisation and Autonomy between Music and Dance

In addition to the concepts introduced in the previous chapter, the

concept of improvisation and its use in the studio with the dancers gradually

began to acquire a guiding role during the creative process. Proposed by

choreographer Eunice Oliveira and fully accepted by the dancers involved in

the research, its importance lies in the fact that improvisation can lead the way

to the integration between music and dance.

There are, generally, two schools of thought on improvisation. One considers improvisation to be the act of freeing the unconscious mind, channeling a deep, internal source to “speak” through the improvised form without submitting what emerges to imperious control of the conscious mind. The other sees [improvisation] as the ultimate act of consciousness, one of expanding awareness and making careful, often immediate, compositional choices that carve and follow an emergent trajectory. (Kloppenberg 2010, 186)

The above quote emphasizes the idea that improvisation is a practice that

favors the unexpected and to some extent, the indeterminate. Improvisation

usually combines the unconscious impulse with conscious rearrangement. And

the manner in which musicians and dancers bring the "unconscious afloat

through this conscious rearrangement is what generates coherent improvisation"

(Kloppenberg 2010, 186).

English guitarist and improviser Derek Bailey (1930-2005) emphasizes

the ephemeral nature of improvisation in music. And according to the musician,

this is precisely where the main strength of improvisation lies: “one of the

enduring attractions of improvisation is its momentary existence: the absence of

a residual document” (1993, 35). Still, the practice of improvisation in the dance

studio can generate productive results. Improvisation, also known as group

creativity (Sawyer 2003, 5), is common in jazz bands and improvisational theater

and can prove to be surprisingly coherent and a promoter of unity and integration

in the relationship between music and dance.30

30 “Contact improvisation emerged in the 1970s not so as a performance form but as a comunal practice that promoted internal awareness, cultivating a particular quality of openness and a nonhierarchical view of the body. In contact improvisation, dancers’ movement is generated in concert with another moving body, prioritizing the physics of the body over both individual impulse and conscious arrangement of movement (Kloppenberg 2010, 187).

32

To that effect, choreographer and dancer Douglas Dunn (1942) states

that in a dance studio he “just found [him]self using certain movements more

than others” (quoted in Brown, Mindlin, and Woodford 1998, 179) and these

movements, which occur more than others, form the personal style of the

choreographer or dancer. If improvisation informs composition, then there is a

kind of style to the composition as a whole, a vocabulary of movement.

Choreographer Trisha Brown calls this vocabulary of movement

“personal resources”. “I used to always improvise, to have some sort of

improvisation in my work – which was purely dealing with my personal

resources on the fly in front of the audience” (quoted in Brown, Mindlin, and

Woodford 1998, 183). This use of “personal resources” and of “movements

that happen more than others,” often generates “open” forms. Such forms can

hinder the creative work of the composer, inasmuch as it is necessary to

intervene, monitor or indicate through sound the movements in the dance.

Composers who collaborated with dance, such as Henry Cowell, John

Cage and Earle Brown, had already embarked on a search for open forms that

would allow a flexible relationship with the choreography. As mentioned earlier, in

order to solve the difference between the process of the composer and that of

the choreographer, Cowell created the elastic form. The choreographers used as

a basis “repeated improvisations in the studio,” and Cowell “lamented the burden

placed on composers. As the dance evolved, the composer was forced to modify

the score” (Miller 2002, 4). Cowell therefore went on to compose his music as a

game of options within a same material, by varying the structure and

instrumentation.

Although he did not directly use improvisation, Cage, from the 1950s,

adopted indeterminate processes – chance operations – in order to introduce

chance as a structuring element of his compositions for Cunningham’s

choreographies, which were also conceived using similar processes. During this

period, “unmotivated sound would be the primary subject of Cage’s music”

(Simms, 346).31

Meanwhile, composer Earle Brown not only used improvisation but

31 According to Kloppenberg,”investigating movement through improvisation, choreographers craft works that embrace imperfection and reclassify the imperfect as the desirable by choosing how-and simply to-present it” (2010, 188).

33

also encouraged the performers to contribute to the composition:

I thought that it would be fantastic to have a piece of music which would have a basic character always, but by virtue of aspects of improvisation or notational flexibility, the piece could take on subtly different kinds of character. (quoted in Bailey 1992, 60)

Thus, it appears that the use of improvisation tends to trigger a process

in which many cooperate and interact in an integrated manner to get to the

final result. According to Earle Brown, this collaboration by those who create

and perform can add a rich “aliveness” to the creative process (quoted in

Bailey 1992, 65).

Choreographer Anne Kloppenberg shares Brown’s conception

regarding the aliveness promoted by the practice of improvisation. In her

article, Improvisation in process: "Post-Control" Choreography (2010),

Kloppenberg notes that “in choreographic practice, improvisation has since

become a tool used to unearth a particular kind of vitality. It generates a

movement that embodies the value of spontaneity and that retains the

physical quality in performance,” thereby giving the work a “vibrant and alive”

aspect (187). The result of this practice is reinforced by a creative process in

which choreographer and dancers collectively create, making room for

surprises and new discoveries:

It is not, however, about eliminating the choice; it’s a place where choice and possibility merge. The choreographer makes choices that mold a particular experience, while the dancers select improvised movements to interact within these structures. (189)

In Earle Brown’s opinion, these improvisation exchanges between

creator and interpreter “bring a new dimension” to the composition, since the

musician collaborates with “a greater intensity” in building the piece (quoted in

Bailey 1993, 65). 32

32 With the creation of Game Pieces – structural improvisation pieces developed between 1974 and 1990 – saxophonist and improviser John Zorn (1953) established a system of interaction between the material and the musicians in which they perform open forms and structures that are supported by improvised processes, thus contributing to the composition in such a way that “improvisors have themselves become composers” (Zorn quoted in Cox and Warner 2009, 200).

34

However, Kloppenberg calls attention to the fact that, from the perspective

of dance, improvisation and choreography, though not excluding practices, are

not directly linked. She explains that “improvisation is 'in the moment' while

choreography, a term that includes both 'write' and 'dance' etymologically, implies

a kind of record: repeatable sequences and predetermined arrangements” (181).

Kloppenberg thus questions whether “we must reexamine our values: what

matters more, the freshness of an emergent idea or the careful predetermined

craft of the work?” (188) How can choreography and improvisation dialogue in an

aesthetic manner? Are they distinct processes?

In dealing with these questions in terms of music, we come across the

response below based on musicologist Bruno Netti’s observations regarding

improvisation:

In those musics which are said to be improvised a number of composition techniques and devices at the microcompositional level appear to be characteristic. Among them are repetition, simple variation of short phrases, melodic sequence, the tendency to start with two successive sections with the same motive, the tendency to increase the length of sections as the performance progresses, and perhaps others. Now all of these techniques are also present in the “set” or “fixed” compositions of certain cultures. (1974, 9-10)

Therefore, in the improvisation processes with more spontaneous

forms of interaction, the composer and choreographer may find fertile material

for their work. As the shaper of the material initially improvised by the

dancers, the choreographer can “construct improvised moments or structuring

elements as building blocks” and then crop, edit and rearrange the material in

such a way to recreate “a selection of improvised moments or structured

elements with the goal of achieving “a movement texture and performance

tone that retains the active presence, impulsivity and spontaneity of the initial

improvisations” (Kloppenberg 2010, 190).

We thus arrive at another aspect of utmost relevance in the use of

improvisation: the fact that the choreographer (or composer) can test his

moves (or sounds) in the studio and make choices as to “what to keep, what

to repeat and how to perform that material in context” (2010, 190). By turning

the studio into a creation and construction laboratory, this professional

experience takes place as “a process of trial and error” (Caplan 1986, video),

35

in order to form the structure of a piece – in the case of this particular

research, a choreo-musical piece.

***

The concept of autonomy, when understood in a radical way in the

relationship between music and dance, generates a particular perspective of

the interlocking of these two art forms. In this context, the relevance of the

ideas and work of Cage is justified not only by the way in which the composer

transformed the thinking of a generation of artists regarding the concepts of

sound, noise and silence (even permanently influencing the dance of Merce

Cunningham), but mainly because of the incorporation of indeterminate

processes where chance, through chance operations, and other similar

procedures were assimilated into musical composition. 33

In his article, Grace and Clarity, originally created for the magazine

Modern Dance in 1944, composer John Cage said that in order to achieve a

healthy relationship between music and dance there should be “a clarity of

rhythmic structure” (1973, 90). Around this time, Cage began using the

prepared piano to compose for dance. According to his biographer, David

Pritchett, these early works of Cage, written for dance, were “timbrally and

texturally quite simple. Usually only a few notes (a dozen or less) are

prepared, and these use only one or two kinds of preparation” (1995, 25). For

example, in Totem Ancestor (1943), created for a Merce Cunningham solo,

only eight notes are “prepared” with screws or bolts.

Overall, in this period “these works are often dominated by a single

unaccompanied line, or by a line with a simple accompaniment, such as a

trill or ostinato pattern” (Pritchett 1995, 25). This “simpler” musical material

was well complemented by very free or "out of tune" movements by

Cunningham.

During the 1940s, Cunningham and Cage introduce the idea of

autonomy between music and dance. With this transformation the artist duo

33 By allowing his choreography to take place without a fixed relationship to the accompanying sound or silence, Cunningham established a new, nonsynchronistic relationship between dance and sound: the idea that they could be both separate and interdependent, existing in the same time but standing alone (Reynolds and Mccormick 2003, 360).

36

makes a break in Modern Dance standards, establishing an alternative path

that is opposite to the ideas of a "wedding" between music and dance, no

longer equivalent and consistent, but autonomous and opposite.

Cage, who initially accompanied dance lessons on the piano, criticized

“musical visualizations.” According to him, composers adept at this technique

"made the music identical with the dance but not cooperative with it.” He

continues as follows:

Whatever method is used in composing the materials of the dance can be extended to the organization of the musical materials. The form of the music-dance composition should be a necessary working together of all materials used. (1973, 87)

To that effect, Cage starts using percussion instruments and prepared

piano to complement Cunningham’s solos, aiming to renew these materials and

to look for new solutions to relate music and dance. Next, he researches

processes governed by chance, for example, based on the Chinese book I

Ching34 and in games with dice.35

Thus, the main advance in this quest, taking into account the work of

Cage and Cunningham, was the use of organizational mechanisms governed by

chance and by lack of control in the composition of both music and dance: "this

went well beyond the modern concept of open form in art and introduced

elements of ambiguity and paradox in their work” (Reynolds and Mccormick

2003, 356).

As for the relationship between music and dance – the main focus of this

study – Cunningham and Cage, with the aim of freeing the movement from any

expression of feeling and undressing the movement of any external influence,

including music, start to seek alternative ways to structure constitutive elements

in music and dance. Starting with Root of an Unfocus (1944), in which movement

34 A Chinese treatise on probabilities, making each decision by tossing a coin six times and looking up the result on a table of ‘hexagrams’ that represent symbolically the 64 possible outcomes for six coin tosses (Kostka 1999, 281). 35 “The common substance of nature and the art of music is sound. Its deployment in music must reflect its reality in nature, where it occurs with ceaseless abandon, unmotivated by the human will, and not produced as a metaphor for any other meaning” (Cage quoted in Simms 1996, 346).

37

and music “met” at the beginning and end of each section but were independent

of one another throughout the piece, the dance came to be detached from the

music and dissociated from musical structures and elements such as beats,

phrases and melodic ideas. Sounds and movements began and ended at the

same time, and that was it.

Unlike Graham, Cunnignham, a former soloist member of the Martha

Graham company, was more interested in “movement for the sake of movement”

than in expressing personal feelings. According to dance researcher, José Gil,

choreography developed by Cunningham was characterized by:

Refusal of expressive forms, decentering of the scenic space, independence of music and movement, introduction of chance in the choreography etc.. All these traits obey the same logic whose principle is to make possible the movement itself, without external references. (2009, 27-28)

According to Gil, Cunningham was influenced by Cage in his intention

to seek “the movement itself, without external references” (2009, 28) through

the introduction of chance in the choreography.

Especially from the start of the 1950s, Cage began researching

compositional achievements in which chance and “unmotivated sounds” were

inserted into the creative process (Simms 1996, 346). Cunningham, in turn,

sought to liberate dance from the obligation to express emotions through

movement and from an “organizing principle that made the body of the dancer

or group of dancers an organic whole whose movements converged for a

purpose” (Gil 2009, 28). The assumption was that there was no purpose or

reason; the movements should not express anything but dance.

The use of chance as a choreographic tool brought the opportunity

to “go from one movement to another, almost always presenting situations

in which the imagination is challenged” (2009, video). Cunningham

described this process as risky but “fascinating;” it was important to “create

a dance that relied only on itself” (quoted in Obrist 2009, 22-23) – a

difficulty for the dancers, who needed to focus so that the music would not

“throw you off” (Kerr in Caplan 1986, video). In this process, Cunningham

would also incorporate day-to-day movements to his choreography, while

38

Cage added noises from sirens, gongs, electronic sounds and unusual

noises to music (Pritchard 1995, 11).36

At the same time that Cunningham freed dance from external

influences, such as music, drama and plot, he required an extremely high

level of concentration and surrender to the present moment. Brown explains:

“and that was with absolute concentration on each single moment, as though

the movements were objet trouvés,37 and in a sense, of course, they were.”

(233). Silence complemented the concentration of the dancers and the

association of the movements with music was made by means of a

stopwatch, as in Suite by chance, “by means of time units alone” (quoted in

Teck 2011, 234).38 There was a practical intention in using the stopwatch. The

instrument allowed for the synchronization of the piece from start to finish, at

the same time “releasing the dance and the dancer from the beat-to-beat or

phrase-to-phrase (or the decision to go against the beat or the phrase) kind of

synchronization most choreographers had accepted as law” (quoted in Teck

2011, 234).

The performances of Cage and Cunningham always took place in

terms of a “group effort” (Christian Wolff 1986, video). This “group effort”,

coupled with the concentration of the dancers and everyone involved in the

“moment” of the performance, as well as the inclusion of all of the unexpected

sounds and events, reflected the ideas of Cage. Besides relying on the

inclusion of “all the sounds” in the composition, Cage believed that the

composer as "creator of beautiful objects should be replaced in importance by

36 Dancer Carolyn Brown (1927) in her article, Dancing with the Avant-Garde (2007), reports that in Suite by chance, probably one of the works for which Cunningham had the most success in using chance operations, the dancers felt frightened during the performance. Brown recalls that “there was only one way for me to approach its abruptness, the going from one isolated movement to another without flow or intended continuity, without a rhythmic pulse dictated by the music, divested of all the dramatic, romantic, sentimental or sensuous devices.” (quoted in Teck 2011, 233) 37 Ready made, an expression coined by Marcel Duchamp to describe an object that consists of one or more articles of everyday use, mass-produced, selected without aesthetic criteria and exhibited as works of art in museums and galleries. (Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural Artes Visuais) 38 “Suite by chance was choreographed and rehearsed in silence. Dance and music met, as if by accident, in the performance space. But by sheer force of habit, I suppose, Cunningham constructed and originally rehearsed it to a metric beat. However, because music for magnetic tape is constructed not in measures but in inches per second, it made sense to unpin the movement from a metric pulse and use instead a stopwatch to relate to the music by means of time units alone” (Brown quoted in Teck 2011, 233-234).

39

the listener, who, sensitized to sounds, is led to an awareness of the unity of

all things” (Simms 1996, 346).

With this new aesthetic of Cage and Cunningham, in which music

and dance become autonomous, the relationship between performance

and audience changes. The questioning of the scenic space, the inclusion

of interference events and performances and installations become common

practice.39 These changes to artistic thinking allow for the emergence in

New York in the 1960s of the Judson Dance Theatre,40 which, in carrying

forward Cunningham’s legacy, “questions the tradition of dance and

theatre” (Jordan 2010, verbal information). A major contribution of the

group was the transformation of the scenic space, including the form and

dynamics of the movements of the dancers, and the relationship with the

audience (Jordan 2010, verbal information).41

Other groups explore in a radical manner the idea of the non-

institutionalization of ballet as art. Along these lines, one of the leading

exponents of this movement, choreographer Trisha Brown (1948), carried out

performances on top of buildings – thereby permanently removing ballet of its

traditional context.42

In conclusion, Jordan provides an overview of the relationship

between music and the arts, weaving a parallel between artistic

conceptions of the 1920s and 1960s. The choreographer conceives of this

period of experimentation43 in the 1960s as a kind of return to these silent

39 Visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, (1925-2008) who often contributed to the scenarios for performances, refers to the experience as "the most excruciating collaboration but the most exciting and real, because nobody knew what anyone was doing until it was too late.“ Each designer worked without interference from the other and the ensemble would only be revealed on the opening day of the show and therefore "everybody had to tolerate everybody" (quoted in Caplan 1986, video). 40 A group of dancers who met regularly at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village in New York in the 1960s. They were considered the most radical dance movement since the 1920s, and the members were influenced by theater, cinema, music, painting, literature and new (or rediscovered) social themes in an atmosphere of relentless search, pushing the boundaries of dance (Reynolds and Mccormick 2003, 393). 41 "Merce still had the notion to make an event, a presentation or a performance, dancers with technique, feet en pointe, legs etc.. But he opened up the possibility, because he worked completely independently of John Cage and other musicians, so he was that starting point for this idea (Jordan 2010, verbal information). 42 Man walking down the side of Building (1970) and Roof and fire piece (1973). 43 Jordan explains that during this time there was a need for a more radical stance from these artists: "Post modern choreographers which included then people like Trisha Brown, Yvone Rainer...and they needed to kind of clear the air,...,its like she needed to make a negative

40

pieces of the 1920s, highlighting its cyclical nature.

...the twentieth century dance people has been a period when people rethought the relation between music and dance very radically. You didn’t have to visualize music, you didn’t have to be like Lopukhov, you could, and Lopukhov is the extreme example of someone wanting everything to be completely one, translated,...but at the same time you have Eisenstein working in the way he does, you have the beginning of people talking about counterpoint and not visualization and you have the early modern dancers in America and Germany in the 1920s making silent pieces. [...] And then there is a return during the 1960s with Yvone Rainer, Merce Cunningham having estabilished the independence...and I think now, nobody needs to prove the point about the silent dance, they can make them and nobody will be shocked or surprised...it’s a possibility (2010, verbal information).

Over time, new features were incorporated into the show, so that music

that was not initially made for dance was used by choreographers and

influenced the art of dance. This is evidenced in performances by various

dance groups today, where the range of music chosen varies from Serialism

to Minimalism, from rock to free jazz, among others.

3 Music Concepts and Key Compositional Tools

statement in a way about the fact that the body doesn’t need music and doesn’t need to be “motionrized”, it can be still, it can be pedestrian" (2010, verbal information).

41

In this chapter we will present the three conceptual and practical tools

that supported the musical creative process of this research. These concepts,

conceptions and ideas have proven useful so that, in order to instigate body

movement, we could create a structure rich in relations to interweave music

and dance. In order to maintain the autonomy of the dance, indeterminate

processes and other mechanisms of the sphere of improvisation will be used,

without losing sight of the repetition structures characteristic of the

choreographic process.

First we will present the concept of Elastic form, created by Henri

Cowell to facilitate the music composition specific to the relationship with

dance. Developed in the 1930s, elastic form consists of a group of practical

rules for rearrangements, as needed, of musical elements. Melodies, phrases,

rhythms and instrumentation form musical structures especially adaptable to

dance (quoted in Teck 2011, 88). The application of the concept, from a

practical point of view, allows for a correct “fit” between music elements and

body movement. In this case, by working with the Logic Pro 8 computer

program, we were able to expand the technique by recording the musical

materials and by midi sequencing, and thus improve the synchronization of

the parts – to the extent that variations of musical material, such as loop,

mute, among others, can be done in real time in the dance studio.

Some of the ideas of North American composer and theorist James

Tenney (1934-2006) will then be introduced. In his book Meta-hodos (1961),

Tenney appropriates elements of the universe of visual arts and adapts them

to music. Based on the principles of cohesion and segregation, the author

introduces the concept of clang, a basic musical unit governed by laws of

internal shaping and perception (2002, 28). The relevance of this conceptual

tool lies in the identification of basic units of meaning and the ease with which

they can be manipulated to create correlations in dance by using the

computer software.

And finally, a reflection on some pieces by composer Steve Reich

(1936) from the 1960s and early 1970s will clarify one of the proposals of this

project: to work with compositional processes and structures from which

unintentional and indeterminate results may arise in the composition.

42

To conclude the chapter, some issues related to the use of the

recording studio as a means of expression will be raised, as well as how this

form of production may affect the music composition, taking the music from a

temporal dimension to a “spatial dimension” (Eno quoted in Cox and Warner

1983, 128).

3.1 Henri Cowell’s Elastic Form

In order to establish a meeting ground for musical and dance composition, in which the dance will be more definite than usual in form, although just as free to make changes, and the music will be less rigid than usual, although no less containing structure, I would propose the establishment of what might be called elastic form. (Cowell quoted in Teck 2011, 88)

In his article Relating Music and Concert Dance (1937), Cowell

stresses that the elastic form is “practical, adaptable and geared to

fluctuations that might occur in dance performances.” (Teck 2011, 86) The

concept, which originated in the 1930s, consists of a group of practical rules

relating to (1) the expansion and contraction of melodies, and (2) the

construction of sections or sentences (block-units). In practice, these rules

allow for the repetition or omission of phrases, readjustment of cadences,

variation in the use of percussion instruments, etc.

As previously mentioned, the technique of counterpoint in dance came

to meet the needs of choreographers to establish some autonomy with regard

to music and to build a more creative relationship between music and dance.

Dance’s dependence on music bothered choreographers, as they realized the

“setness of form, which is incompatible with the greater natural freedom of the

dance.”44 (Cowell quoted in Teck 2011, 87)

Since many of the choreographies were born out of “repeated

improvisations” in the dance studio, choreographies created before the music

began to emerge, as well as others danced only to percussion instruments and

some without any music altogether (Cowell quoted in Teck 2011, 87). In order to

adapt his compositions to the new choreographies and create music that would

44 Cowell describes that “At first, concert dance was practically all choreographed after the music, and rested on the form and emotional content of the music.” (quoted in Teck 2011, 87)

43

share the space and the viewer's interest on equal terms with the dance, the

composer would then often need to change his score. According to Cowell, “the

key music-dance equality lay in large-scale formal planning” (Miller 2002, 4).

Cowell therefore proposes the creation and use of block-units, which

were blocks of units that dancers could “expand, contract, repeat, omit,

transpose, revert or interchange in various ways – allowing the sound to

respond to the choreography without disturbing its own validity.” The

composition of these block-units, which could be phrases, sections, or motifs,

with the potential for “flexibility”, would generate a greater number of “irregular

sections and diversity in the duration of the phrases,” enabling the creation of

rich contrapuntal sections in relation to the dance (2002, 4).

Cited and discussed below are the main practical ideas contained in

the article by Henri Cowell, Relating Music to Concert Dance (1937), and the

manner in which these ideas can be put into practice today, with the use of

music software.

1. Each melodic phrase should be constructed so that it may be expanded or contracted in size or duration, by the shortening or lengthening of certain key tones; 2. Each sentence, as well as being capable of varying length, should be so constructed that it may be used as block-unit in the general structure. This means it may be used and then another sentence may follow, or it may be repeated, either in the same form or in a varied form if it is desired to expand this portion of the dance. (quoted in Teck 2011, 88)

In terms of the use of block-units, previously we mentioned how useful

computer programs can be in the manipulation of such blocks in real time in

the studio or in dance performances. The visual representation of these

blocks on the computer screen shows the sounds through colours and shapes

and is easy to manipulate with the mouse. This technological tool favors the

3rd topic:

3. Each section should be so constructed that it may be used in the same way as suggested for sentences; that is, as well as being capable of being long and short, owing to how many repeats are employed in the sentences, it must be able to repeated or not. (p.88-89)

In the case of the sections, the use of the computer software facilitates

44

the repetition and omission of specific stretches through use of the loop and

mute tools, respectively, depending on what is called for in the dance.

We can see how, for Cowell, the flexibility of the sections helps to

“tailor” the music to the dance. In this case, one wonders if it really is possible

to keep the identity of the composition when using so many variations. Or

does the music composition itself occur in other terms, that is, as an open

framework that leverages possible changes and variations?

4. Both sentences and sections may be so arranged, in the final cadences, so that they may be shuffled about, and not always appear in the same order. For example, let us suppose that three different sections are used. They might appear the first time in the order 1, 2, 3, 1; and follow afterwards in the order 2, 3, 2, 1. In case not all possible orders of sequence are practical, the composer may indicate which ones may be employed. (89)

Although this mode of ordering the material can bring about a

fragmented character or create punctually abrupt threads in the articulation of

elements, the composer's aesthetic choice can mitigate or remove such

problems. 45

As for instrumentation, Cowell warns that:

5. If percussion instruments are used, they should be scored in such a manner that the rhythms may be played on different sets of instruments – that is, one part which may be played on either dragon’s mouth or wood-blocks, another which may be played on either Chinese or Indian tom-toms, etc. Also, there should be a full set of parts to use in case of a large performance; but a certain few of these parts should outline the essential rhythms, and be marked, so that it is possible to cut down the number of instruments used and still preserve the outline. (89)

Thus, regardless of the tools available in the dance studio, it will always

be possible to rehearse and perform a piece. Furthermore, many dance

instructors until this day use percussion instruments in their classes. As

mentioned in the first chapter, the absence of melodic and harmonic elements

45 Here we find a point of contact between the technique of elastic forms and the Cage and

Cunningham chance operations, in which sections, phrases and choreographic movements were “shuffled” and drawn at random. The essential difference is that in the case of these

creators, the factor that determined what would be used in the composition, both musical and choreographic, was a rolling of the dice or the I Ching book, whereas in Cowell’s case the choreography was what dictated the composer's choices.

45

in these instruments enables the dance to remain autonomous in relation to

the music material; the use of these instruments can be seen as a way to

“strip” the music of some of its most characteristic elements, enabling a more

open sound-movement relationship.

We are thus led directly to the next principle:

6. The melodic and harmonic part of the work should be arranged so that all of it may be played on a piano, as that is the instrument usually at hand to rehearse with. In many cases is also desirable to have other melodic instruments used in a performance, since the piano is more colorless from backstage; therefore, optional parts for instruments should be included. These should be so arranged that either one orchestral instrument may be used, in case of a smaller performance, giving the main melody; or several may be used, in case of a larger performance. (89-90)

In this context, Cowell turns to the practical possibilities of executing

the works and to the availability of certain music instruments. The choice of

using the piano (available in most dance studios) favors a writing oriented

towards an instrument that can actually be used in rehearsals and

performances. As for the score, there is a noted concern by the composer in

maintaining the character of the work through the choice of instruments: the

high part should be “played on either a flute or a violin, the middle part on

either a viola or a clarinet, the lower part on either a cello or a bassoon, etc.”

(89).46

7. The whole work may, then, be short – the minimum length being determined by performing each sentence and section once only – or as long as desired, by adding the repeats ad libitum. (Cowell 1937 quoted in Teck 2011, 90)

During our research, we noticed in our rehearsals in the studio that the

46 In an interview with Henry Gilfond, composer and choreographic creation instructor Louis Horst says the following: “The string is a courtly instrument and has nothing to do with us here. However, it’s not altogether inconceivable that strings may be or will be used for dance compositions. Woodwinds are primitive instruments, more suitable to the modern dance" (quoted in Teck 2011, 51). He adds that dance is “neo-primitive” art (the author does not explain this term) and woodwinds along with brass and percussion instruments are especially suitable for primitive art” because “Reed instruments augmented by brass and drums are especially suited to a primitive art form; brass gives it a new vitality” (p. 51). It’s impossible not to think of the bassoon in Le Sacre du Primtemps or other choreographies in which woodwinds have a featured role. One should remember that modern dance was developed at the same time when new sounds were being explored in concerts, when percussion instruments were being increasingly featured.

46

dancers and choreographer felt a need for more repetition and for certain

sections of the music to be longer. Ad libitum repetitions were made possible

due to the use of the computer instead of musicians. By using the cursor of

the recording software, any part of the music can be repeated without much

effort. This way, a loop of any section, phrase or portion of the composition

could be easily created.

Cowell concludes that the ideal composition for dance would be some

type of game with multiple options to adjust the sounds to the dance, so that

the “whole work will, in any of its ways or presentation, have form; but it may

be easily adapted to the changes and freedoms so essential to the dancer’s

creation.” (quoted in Teck 2011, 90) From this perspective, the role of the

composer is to prepare structures in which “the individual rhythm, the

phrases, the sentences, the sections, the whole work, the rhythmic and the

tonal orchestration are elastic,” thus enabling the “adjustment,” the

“arrangement” of materials, as in assembly games. These structures, in their

genesis, provide for repetition, variation and omission of certain portions,

according to the needs of the choreography (p. 90).

Composer Norman Lloyd (1909-1980) described as follows the

presentation of the music of Immediate Tragedy, composed by Cowell for

choreography by Martha Graham:

Not knowing how long any section of the dance was, Cowell invented a method he called “elastic form” by which his music could be matched to the dance. I well remember the day the music arrived at Bennington47. Louis Horst and I looked at it and agreed that we had never seen anything like it. Cowell had written two basic phrases to be played by oboe and clarinet. Each phrase existed in two-measure, three-measure, eight-measure versions, and so on. All that was necessary was to fit a five-measure musical phrase to a five-measure dance phrase – or make such overlaps as were deemed necessary. (quoted in Teck 2011, 92)

According to Lloyd, “the process, as I remember it, took about an hour. The

total effect was complete unity – as though dancer and composer had been in

47 Created by Martha Hill and Mary Shelly in Vermont (USA) in 1934, the Bennington School of Dance is considered a “unique impetus to the expansion of modern dance as an art form” (Teck 2011, 93). The pioneering dance school promoted summer dance festivals that played a crucial role in the development of the arts in the United States.

47

the closest communication (92).

In this research, during the improvisation sessions with the dancers in

the dance studio, we verified how this type of procedure – the use of elastic

forms – is suitable for working with dance. In addition to having his music

adjust to the body movement, the composer has the chance to outline ideas

for the composition and “test” these ideas in real time with the dancers on the

spot.

Therefore, when working with open and therefore “living” forms,

wherein a rearrangement of parts of a whole can easily be realized according

to the needs of the movements and the tempos, and which conforms to the

guidelines of a choreographer, we can bestow a feeling of freshness upon the

music composition.

On one occasion during the rehearsals in the studio, choreographer

Eunice Oliveira asked me to extend a specific section of one of the

compositions used in the sessions, in order to allow for the movements to be

developed. “The movement needs time in order to happen,” mentioned the

choreographer. On another occasion, I expressed my desire to remove a

portion of the composition, and she stopped me from doing it, as she thought

that portion was “necessary” (Oliveira 2011, verbal information).

In the course of the study we observed that the use of freer forms can

confer a shapeless aspect48 to the composition when they are used solely to

fit the dance. However, in certain musical passages this choice was

indispensable in view of the dialogical nature of the relationship between

music and dance.

3.2 Formation Units: James Tenney and the Formation of Clangs

48 Which actually would not be a problem. According to English composer and theorist Michael Nyman (1944), “form is a resultant, an accumulation of what has happened in the piece – emphasis is on experience rather than structure.” One of the characteristics of the music labeled by the author as experimental music in the book Experimental Music – Cage and Beyond (1974) is the possibility to “subvert the idea of form” (1999, 44).

48

The composer as a creator of beautiful objects should be replaced in importance by the listener, who, sensitized to sounds, is led to an awareness of the unity of all things. (Cage quoted in Simms 1996, 346)

If from Cowell we incorporated the elastic forms and the ways in which

to increase, shorten, repeat, skip and “shuffle” phrases, sections and block-

units, it was through the ideas of composer and theorist James Tenney (1934-

2006) that unity and structure were conferred upon such blocks.49

In his book, Meta-hodos: A Phenomenology of 20th-Century Musical

Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form (1961), the composer reflects

on the new sound materials and new musical structures of the twentieth

century. In order to create a new set of concepts to accommodate these new

sound materials, Tenney appropriates organization principles of the visual arts

and applies them in the creation of laws of perception and formal aural units.

According to Tenney, the new music and the new musical materials

exhibit a complexity of structures and content, not only because they are the

result of rearrangements of existing traditional elements, but because the very

elements and sound materials have changed. These changes, these new

materials, affected the structures and influenced the manner in which to listen

to and perceive music; “the changes affect not only the musical structure, but

our way of listening to the music as well” (2000, 4).

In addition, the new music incorporates sounds and various types of

noises into the composition process. More dissonant melodic lines,

percussive sounds, urban ambiences (soundscapes), electronic sounds

created in the studio – in short, “the elemental building-materials of this music

are no longer limited to ‘musical’ tones” – any sound source can be used in

composing (Tenney 2000, 8). Thus, in view of the resulting gap between the

theory and practice of listening, Tenney suggests that our conceptual

framework regarding sound be expanded to encompass these new

complexities.50 The first prerequisite, then, will be to build a “principle of

equivalence” between the sounds (9).

49 It is important to stress that the purpose of this paper is not to go into detail and delve into the ideas of James Tenney but rather present concepts from the visual arts that, properly adjusted to music, informed our creative process. 50 The problem is not really a lack of familiarity, but an almost complete hiatus between music

49

To this end, Tenney leans on the ideas of Max Wertheimer about the

organizational structures of perceptual form51, starting with the factors of

cohesion and segregation units that operate within systems of points and lines

in the visual field. Tenney suggests that with a simple translation of visual

terms to sound terms we can learn and apply many of these principles in

music: "many of the principles of organization of visual forms may be shown

to be involved in auditory perception” (28). In line with the purpose of his

research, Tenney then asks "what factors are responsible for the unity or

singularity of the clang" and also for separating a clang from another in a

sequence? Tenney will always take the auditory perception into consideration

in guiding his analysis (26).

Through the analysis of excerpts from works of new music (Varèse,

Webern and Ives, among others) and the deconstruction of traditional

concepts and expressions from the field of music, such as “phrase”, “theme”,

“chord”, “chord progression”, and even “melody” and “harmony”, Tenney

creates a new set of concepts about sound and sound-configuration with the

goal of applying the laws of perception drawn from the visual arts, namely,

element, clang and sequence.

The most important of these concepts for our purposes is the concept

of clang, defined as follows: “a sound or sound-configuration which is

perceived as a primary musical unit or aural gestalt52," a forming unit. The

concept of clang is an extension of Pierre Schaefer’s objet sonore53 concept,

but it is focused on the perception of the object rather than on its acoustic or

technical manipulation, and it can be applied to any music, be it instrumental

theory and musical practice. Thus, even when various new musical styles and techniques of the twentieth century become quite familiar, certain 'complexities' remain beyond our current conceptual framework, and it is clear that this conceptual framework needs to be expanded (Tenney 2000, 28). 51 Laws of Organization in Perceptual Form (1923) (2000, 28). 52 Of German origin, [...] the word Gestalten means "to shape, to confer a significant structure." The term gestaltung, which implies a planned action, in progress or completed, seems more suited to that context. Gestaltung means a process of shaping, a “formation” (Ginger 1987, 13). 53 “A term coined by composer Pierre Schaeffer to describe the smallest self-contained particle of a soundscape. Though it may be referential (i.e., a 'bell'), it is to be considered as pure sound, independente of its source and of any semantic content” (Cox and Warner 2009, 413). For Tenney, the “object sonore is defined as any sound or series of sounds written to disk or tape so that the composing process automatically involves the potential equivalence of various elements” (2002, 25).

50

or electronic, “whether it employs natural or synthetic sounds, whether its

psychological implications are ‘abstract or ‘concrete’” (Tenney 2000, 25).

Of the visual arts cohesion and segregation factors outlined by Tenney,

the factors of proximity, similarity, intensity and repetition were selected, in

view of the planning and organization of musical elements and processes

relating to this research. Therefore, these objective qualities of perception are

unit formers (clangs).

In defining the sense of proximity, Max Wertheimer postulates that “in a

collection of similar visual elements, those which are close together in space

will naturally or spontaneously tend to form groups in perception” (quoted in

Tenney 2000, 28). Similarly, when space is replaced by time, there is a

correlation between visual and aural elements (28).54

As for the “similarity” factor, Tenney refers to “a collection of visual

elements” that, through similarity, “tend to be grouped by the eye”

(Wertheimer quoted in Tenney 2000, 29). This way, in music the perception

of similarity occurs when we recognize the elements through the “ear”.

According to Tenney, “any attribute that is characteristic of sound”

will be decisive – for cohesion or segregation – in creating formation units,

clangs, such as rhythm, timbre, attack, melody, dynamics and articulation.

Musical events that contain some similarity can thus be grouped together,

especially if they are close in time-space.

In this context, Tenney expands his discussion to explain the

complementary relationship between the concepts of proximity/similarity and

simultaneousness: “In a collection of sound-elements, those which are

simultaneous or contiguous will tend to form clangs, while relatively greater

separations in time will produce segregations” (29). As for the similarity

between the musical elements, Tenney points to the fact that often two or

more parameters, because they are similar, can generate a sense of

cohesion.

One parameter may run counter to another with respect to the operation of this factor of similarity. But it is the existence of a

54 Tenney uses the term ‘analogy’ to refer to the correlation between visual elements and sound. A discussion about the appropriateness of this term is not warranted for the development of this work.

51

relatively higher degree of similarity in some parameter that is the unifying force in such clangs. (31)55

For Tenney, parameters such as dynamic level, envelope, temporal and

vertical density obey the same principle (32).

The complementary relationship between proximity/similarity and

simultaneity is relevant to this research because many clangs used in the

compositions are characterized by simultaneity. Digital distortion, concrete

sounds and ambiences in Dolcerino form a very dense clang.

Proximity and similarity are not the only factors involved in the

organization of units of perception, but they are the most basic and crucial in

determining clangs and sequences. There are also secondary factors, which,

for our purposes, are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Despite being understood and often used by composers and

performers to create climax, develop tension or intensify a musical passage,

the concept of intensity can be explained in a broader manner. According to

Tenney,

It is a common fact of musical experience that a greater subjective intensity is usually associated with a rise in pitch, an increase in dynamics level or in tempo, etc. Similarly, a change from a ‘smooth' or 'mellow' timbre to a more 'harsh' or 'piercing' sound, or from a more consonant to a more dissonant interval, is felt as an increase of subjective intensity. (2000, 35)

Tenney adds that wherever there are more intense moments of change

in any one parameter there is a “focus” of attention in this passage: “one’s

attention is not usually distributed evenly among the component elements, but

is focused more strongly on certain elements than on others” (36). This

moment of “focus” of attention is called the focal point. Tenney makes use of a

visual idea, the focus of the camera or lens, to emphasize a relationship of

contrast between “figure and background”. In music, this relationship is “built”

as follows:

55 To illustrate this idea, Tenney uses a selection from Varèse’s Octandre to demonstrate that the similarity between the F, Eb and D notes is more aggregating than the difference in tone between the clarinet and the trumpet, in forming a clang (30).

52

When the attention is focused upon one element or group of elements more directly than it is upon others in a clang, the relative musical importance of the various elements must obviously be different, with the less intense elements taking a subordinate role in the total configuration (40).

This “relative musical importance” of the various elements occurs

through a hierarchy among the musical elements, as if the moments of

greater intensity in a clang were highlighted, centralizing more of the listener’s

attention, as if there were a marker, which reminds us of the idea of “structure

point” mentioned by Jordan when referring to choices by choreographer Mark

Morris. 56

In further developing his point of view, Tenney draws attention to two

forms of behavior of the elements in relation to our perception:

1) if the differences in the intensity of various elements are not too great, the more intense elements tend to be in a sharper focus than those of less intensity; 2) if the differences in parametric intensity are considerable, successive clangs will tend to be formed which are initiated by the more intense, accented elements. (41)

Ultimately, the repetition factor brings relative independence. Tenney

explains that this factor may determine the organization of perception, even

when other parameters tend to form several different groupings:

If the repetition of parametric profile is perceived within a series of sound-elements, this alone may produce a subdivision of the whole series into units corresponding to the repeated shape – the perceptual separation between the units occurring at the point just before the first repeated element. (41)

In spite of not offering further explanation on this issue, Tenney states

that this concept, understood as a form of objective apprehension of musical

structures, is associated with memory, since there is “a comparison of what

was being heard at a given moment with what had already been heard” (49).

Thus, it is clear that the factors of similarity and repetition are related because

one needs to realize that something is similar in order to recognize that, in the

long term, something is repeating itself.

56 Infomation from page 23 in this paper: “by picking out some accents and not all, but some, choosing some, he makes you hear those movements like structural points” (Jordan 2012, verbal information).

53

In the last section of Meta-Hodos, Tenney weaves important

considerations regarding the concept of form in music. According to the

author, this definition is linked to two concurrent ideas: the first (shape) has to

do with the shape or contour of the sound configuration; it is more related to

the external aspect, to its apparent surface; the other idea is related to the

structure, to the internal aspect of the form, its interrelationships and internal

connections. This last notion of the concept, that of structure, in turn

presupposes the existence of “parts that are subordinate to one another.” And

for Tenney, “there can be only parts where there is difference.” In the case of

music, this means that the structures are perceived in a hierarchical manner,

in time, as differences between one moment and another.

After an understanding of the definitions of cohesion and segregation

factors of perception governed by the laws of organization, in terms of the

formal perception in the visual arts, we will demonstrate how the repetition

factor is present and even a determining factor in the unit formation in the

“process” compositions by Steve Reich.

3.3 Steve Reich: repetition, processes and “resulting patterns” (phasing)

The ideas of James Tenney were used to identify how the sound

material was structured to create forming units. The elastic forms of Henri

Cowell were useful in planning the organization of the sound material in order

to tailor it to dance in a practical manner. Meanwhile, the techniques of

composer Steve Reich (1936), especially those of his early compositional

career, offer a reflection on the possibilities of pursuing a composition path

based on a recording process open to unintended results – in which the

musical material “runs its course” and creates its own structure.

Between the mid 1960s and early 1970s, Reich experimented with

recording and manipulating loops57 on magnetic tape, which accidentally led

him to discover new composition techniques influenced by machinery and

repetition.

57 Expression of English origin that meant to walk in circles. In music it refers to structures that repeat themselves, such as ostinatos, widely used in electronic music.

54

According to Paul Hillier, editor of the book Writings on Music58 (2002),

Reich’s compositions are mainly characterized by “the simultaneous repetition

in two or more voices of a pattern with self-regulating changes.” This pattern

generates a “process of gradual change” (2002, 4).59

In 1964, Reich starts conducting experiments in musique concrète. With

the intention of increasing the melodic nature of “spoken” voices while

preserving their understanding, Reich creates ostinatos and conducts other

manipulations with words and phrases recorded on tape. These experiments

led to the discovery process of phasing,60 which can be seen in one of his early

career pieces, called Come Out (1966) (Simms 1996, 407). In this piece, Reich

selects the phrase 'Come out and show them' (the words of a young man

arrested during riots in Harlem) and builds a process of repetition. Reich

“distorts the words beyond comprehension, but creates rhythms of gradual

change and new melodic fragments through the interaction between channels"

(407).

In his article Music as a Gradual Process (1968), Reich refers to the

process not as a gradual process of composition, but as “pieces of music that

are, literally, processes,” and that these musical processes “determine all the

note-to-note (sound-to-sound) details and the overall form simultaneously”

(2002, 34).

In an interview with Michael Nyman (1970), Reich describes how he

used magnetic tape to compose Come Out (1966):

I first made a loop of the phrase ‘Come out to show them,’ and recorded a whole reel61 of that on channel 1 of a second tape recorder. I then started recording the loop on channel 2; after lining up the two tracks, with my thumb on the supply reel62 of the recording machine, I very gradually held it back (I was literally slowing it down, but at such an imperceptible rate that you can’t hear) until ‘Come out to show them’ had separated into ‘come out-come out/show them-show them (which is something like two eighth notes apart).

58 A collection of articles written by Steve Reich between 1965 and 2000. 59 Hiller claims that “the changes that we hear emerge from the process itself, are a consequence of that process, and are not arbitrarily imposed from without” (4). 60 A type of relationship between two or more simultaneous voices that move out of “phase,” out of “sync,” thus creating a feeling of delay or mismatch between the voices. 61 whole reel – the main part of the reel; it contain the magnetic tape and usually works alongside the pinch roller in the machine’s traction. (Kuster 2011, information via email) 62 supply reel – the part of the reel that is initially empty but then gradually starts to fill up as the tape plays. (same)

55

Then I took that two-channel relationship, made a loop from it, fed it into channel 1 again, and held it back with my thumb until it was four eighth-notes away from the original sound and could be heard as a series of equal beats, quite distinct melodically. I then spliced63 together the two-voice tape with the four-voice tape – they fit exactly – and what you sense at that point is a slight timbral difference, due to all this addition, and then all of a sudden a movement in space. At that point I divided it again into eight voices, separated it by just a thirty-second-note, so that the whole thing began to shake, then I just faded it out again and put those two takes together. (2002, 53)

Regarding the importance of the process in Reich, Hillier says that

“Reich’s special brilliance lies in making apparently simple melodic/rhythmic

states yield surprising aural ambiguities.” When displacing small structures or

phrases, a “new light is shed on it from within” (2002, 4-5).

After experimenting with loops and the magnetic tape in pieces such as

Come Out and It’s Gonna Rain (1965), Reich begins to adapt these findings

to other compositional contexts. The composer had found the process of

phasing almost accidentally and wanted to apply it to compositions with

traditional instruments.64 His first work in this direction was Piano Phase

(1967), in which Reich transferred the phasing process of the magnetic tape

to the instrumentation of two pianos;65 that is, starting from a unison, there is

a gradual displacement of a small cell. Gradually, both pianists return to the

pattern in unison. In the Piano Phase score there is a leaflet entitled

Directions for playing, in which Reich provides instructions regarding the

indefinite number of repetitions (“more than the minimum and less than the

maximum”), the duration of the piece (“it should be about 20 minutes”) and the

performance (the placement of the musicians).66

In interviews and articles Reich confided that he always sought a

organic relationship with the performance. His goal is derived, then, from the

63 splice – splice made to the magnetic tape (the tape is cut and the splice is the adhesive tape used to join the two ends) (ibid.) 64 “What tape did for we basically was on the one hand to realize certain musical ideas that at first just had to come out of machines, and on the other to make some instrumental music possible that I never would have got to by looking at any Western or non-Western music” (54). 65 This process was described in the follow manner by music theorist R. Simms in the book Music of the Twentieth Century (1996): “two pianists play a short repeated figure in unison; one player then gradually increases tempo, moving out of phase with the other pianist. Eventually the two return to a unison” (1996, 407-408). 66 Reich does not use improvisation with regard to the performance of the interpreters, “I am not interested in improvisation.” What interests Reich is the “music that works exclusivley with gradual transformations in time” (81).

56

need to stimulate processes that rely less on the score and more on the

interplay between the musicians: “The pleasure I get from playing is not the

pleasure of expressing myself, but of subjugating myself to the music and

experiencing the ecstasy that comes from being part of it” (90). Reich is thus

interested in a relationship between forms of mechanical repetition, so called

minimalist, and a state of being “free of all that momentarily comes to mind”

that is reached during the process (2002, 82). In other words, to relinquish the

decisive process, in part, may be a surprising process due to the appearance

of unintended and unexpected results.

These pieces, which contain Reich’s process of phasing, eventually

generate, as a result of excessive repetition, “psychoacoustic by-products of

the intended process” that make a never-ending transition, changing the

emphasis of the music’s accents and downbeats. For Reich, these fragments

include “sub-melodies heard within repetitive melodic patterns, stereophonic

effects due to the listener location, slight irregularities in performance,

harmonics, different tones, and so on.” (2002, 35)

In order for these secondary patterns to be perceived, Reich uses

instruments or sounds of the same tone, which in turn, apart from providing

uniformity to the music also feed the process of generating “unintentional” by-

products and fragments67.

This behavior can be seen in the illustration below, included in the

instructions of the Piano Phase score:

67 “One of the most noticeable aspects of my music has been that it is written for ensembles of two or more identical instruments. Starting with It’s Gonna Rain for identical tape loops moving out of phase with each other, through the other tape pieces Come Out and Melodica, and into the instrumental pieces, Piano Phase for two pianos, Violin Phase for four violins, Phase Patterns for four electric organs, and the first three sections of Drumming, this was necessary because the phasing process is only clearly audible when the two or more voices moving against each other are identical in timbre, and therefore combine to form one complete resulting pattern in the ear” (66).

57

IMAGE 2 – DIRECTIONS FOR PLAYING SOURCE: Piano Phase playing score (1967)

In some of his works from this period, Reich still reinforces these

rhythms fragments and secondary melodies, giving instructions to the

musicians to bend these sub-melodies, “underlying them, as it were, for the

audience” (Simms 1996, 410), as in the excerpt from the score of Piano

Phase, in which the bottom piano of the system, already out of phase and

accelerated, accentuates parts of the notes of the top piano of the system:

IMAGE 3 – SUB-MELODIES OF PIANO PHASE SOURCE: Piano Phase playing score (1967)

Beginning in 1973, Steve Reich’s music takes a different direction. In

spite of not resuming the phasing processes of his earlier works, Reich still

uses repeating patterns and creates rich textures with an overlay of “slow-

moving” chords and vivid melodic lines that remind us of his initial phase

(Simms, 410).

This idea that is focused on creating a mechanism that combines the

starting material to a process that automatically generates the form and

content of the work was used in the piece Plano Primo, a composition used

with the dancers in the dance studio and in the video-dance Vagão.

58

3.4 Coda: Brian Eno and the Studio as a Compositional Tool

The effect of tape was that it really put music in a spatial dimension, making it possible to squeeze the music, or expand it. (Eno 1983 quoted in Cox and Warner 2002, 128)

English composer and producer Brian Eno (1960), in an article

originally written for Down Beat magazine (1983), raises some ideas that

expand and complement our understanding of Reich’s tape loop experiments

in the 1960s. The recording of sounds in a composition studio allows the

composer to store material and then later execute it for editing and

processing. Eno says that the “move to tape was very important, because as

soon as something’s on tape, it becomes a substance which is malleable and

mutable and cuttable and reversible” (128). This composition tool therefore

generates a familiarity with details often unintended by the composer.

With an increase in the number of tracks over the years, that is, with

the transformation of the magnetic tape into a multi-track recorder, the

recording process and hence the composition process can now add68 other

sound elements. 69

According to Eno, a particular field of composition then emerges: the

“in-studio” composition in which the composer or music producer “no longer

come[s] to the studio with a conception of the finished piece. Instead, you

come with actually rather a bare skeleton of the piece, or perhaps with nothing

at all” (129). This type of “in-studio” composition leads to a fusion between

composer and performer, or rather the composer also becomes the

performer, the “executioner” of the work, bringing the creative process in the

studio closer to an actual performance. According to Eno, “in a compositional

sense this takes the making of music away from any traditional way that

composers worked, as far as I’m concerned, and one becomes empirical in a

way that the classical composer never was” (129).

68 In music, this process of addition is called ‘overdub’. 69 Later other technological advances (the synthesizer, midi technology, the sequencer, and especially the computer) would come to transform the recording studio in a decisive manner.

59

Thus, the “in-studio” composition makes room not only for the

assimilation of indeterminate compositional processes, improvisation or the

acceptance of chance and randomness inside the studio – those involved now

long for performance practices during the recording process – but also for the

emergence of intuitive processes that can start from scratch or from very little,

such as a loop.70

Ultimately, the “hands on” composition process in the recording studio

– a process in which the “fingers” control the action, combined with the

performance, with the act of performing a composition at the moment of its

creation, both associated with unplanned or indeterminate actions – was in

part the goal of the creative process of this research.

As a result, many of the choices made during the process were

intuitive; however, the option for a composition that valued the moment was

always present. The use of the studio as a compositional tool played a key

role in providing direction for this work in the extent that we decided to accept

unprogrammed results - the inclusion of chance in composition.

The material presented in this chapter will be developed in the section

on the scope and specifications of the composition. In this context, it is

important to describe and reflect on the transposition of the principles of unit

formation from the visual arts to music, the improvisation sessions with the

dancers in the dance studio, and not least, how music recording softwares

can be used to accompany the improvisations of the dancers, especially with

regard to the handling of “block-units” to create “elastic” structures which are

repeated (loops) and thus generate variations on form "in real time".

70 Eno describes the production of a recent U2 composition as “the most magical experience” he had ever had in a studio. The process was born from the choice of an irregular loop that he manipulated moments before the arrival of the band, “and then we just started playing it and this piece just started to grow and grow and grow and grow and it was the most extraordinary feeling, this thing, as people felt their way into it their confidence grew in what they were playing and it became like a bigger and bigger feeling and that contour of the way the piece came into being is in the piece [...] it sounded like this amazing crescendo, emotional crescendo, which it was, it was us finding out where we were and being able to expand what we were doing with it" (2009, video). Available at: <http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mYx0dt9iKE>.

60

4 Scope and Specifications of the Composition

[...] the accounts are unanimous in affirming the existence of two stages in the composition process: the first, called 'inspiration' [...], during which an idea or theme appears in the consciousness in skeletal form; the second, called 'execution', during which the idea is subjected to a series of more conscious and deliberate processes of extension and transformation. (Sloboda 2010, 152)

This chapter aims to describe the practical portion of this research. We

will be presenting the composition procedures in the recording studio with the

use of the Logic Pro 8 computer software, as well as the improvised

choreographic procedures in the dance studio, where music and dance relate

in a dialogical mode to form a “third thing,” an integrated product – the dance

video – which was later filmed and edited under the supervision of

choreographer Eunice Oliveira.71

During our initial talks about the path that the research should take,

Oliveira suggested improvisation as a composition tool in the dance studio.

Since I had already been working with processes of improvisation and the

assimilation of chance in music, I thought the idea was appropriate.

Furthermore, current recording tools allow for a greater use of these

processes, since music-recording programs have become increasingly more

intuitive and graphical, incorporating visual references to the creative process.

At a later moment, dancers of the Balé do Teatro Guaíra, Alessandra

Lange, Raphael Ribeiro, Lucas Machado and Reinaldo Pereira joined the

choreographer. The work inside the dance studio motivated me to use

improvisation as a structure-generating element, as in the elastic forms of

Henri Cowell. This way, the music conformed to the dance and the dancers

contributed as interpreters-creators in creating choreo-musical pieces.72

With regard to the music, the pieces were the fruit of my experience at

the Universidade Federal do Paraná (Paraná Federal University), stemming

especially from studies in composition and analysis, in which several

branches of the field of composition were researched and absorbed over a

period of two years.

71 Shooting by Cesar Rafael and editing by Nat Ovelar with supervision by Eunice Oliveira. 72 Concept created by Stephanie Jordan for pieces in which music and dance are integrated.

61

In the case of Drone, a piece that was born from a guitar noise, the first

improvisation session in the dance studio is described – when we applied the

concept of Cowell’s elastic forms. During this phase, we observed the

coherence of the movements improvised by the dancers.

The musical elements of Drone reflect a fusion of the ideas of John

Cage with reflections on the compositions of Steve Reich’s early career. In

Cage’s case, the acceptance of noises and “undesirable” sounds like “extra-

musical” ambiance were assimilated into the composition. As for Reich, the

use of repetition and phasing provided support for the creation of the piece’s

content and form.

Some processes of assimilation of chance and indeterminacy were

influential in creating Drone inside the recording studio. This type of

composition-performance, typical of the studio environment, talks to Brian

Eno's research on the use of the recording studio as a compositional tool.

In Dolcerino, the task was to create a clang followed by a second clang

that contrasted with the first. Therefore the piece, in binary form, is

characterized by alternating clangs, which interweave. A graphical

representation was made of the recording session on the Logic software, and

with the aid of colours the clangs were outlined, as were their main

characteristics in accordance with James Tenney’s principles of perception of

formation units.

In addition, we include images of the Dolcerino improvisation session in

the dance studio, where we look for recurring movements from the dancers and

some kind of relationship between what happens in the dance with the music,

based on the notions of units and formation of clangs.

Finally, Plano Primo, a composition that emerged from the recording of a

car horn in a soundscape and that developed as the basic motif for an exercise

in counterpoint, underwent transformations that resemble Reich’s processes of

repetition. This piece was used in the final product of the research, the dance

video Vagão, a performance at a bus stop in Curitiba on February 9, 2012.

62

4.1 Compositional Procedures

4.1.1 Drone

I believe that the use of noise [...] will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments [...] which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. (Cage 1973, 2-3)

The Drone composition was the first piece to be worked on in the dance

studio. Inspired by Steve Reich's gradual processes, Drone was the result of a

mistake, an accident, an unintentional noise that occurred in the final moments of

a guitar recording. The piece was elaborated by taking advantage of this guitar

“leftover”, this noise, as a motif for the creation of a musical work.

Taking into account Paul Hegarty’s definition of noise from the book

Noise/Music: A History, “as noise, as residue, unexpected by-product,” an

excess, the undesirable (Hegarty 2008, 4), many of the choices – whether

conscious or not – along the compositional process reflected this gestation of

sound generated by mistake, by chance and unintentionally.

The illustration of the original noise/motif is shown below:

IMAGE 4 –ORIGINAL MOTIF “a” SOURCE: The author (2012)73

At first, original motif “a” was broken down into smaller-sized audios

and “dragged” with the mouse to other channels.74 These audios were

transformed into loops and added to the original motif, which was also

repeated. Thus, the texture of the piece gradually progressed from a less

73 Unless otherwise indicated, all illustrations and tables in this chapter are sourced from the author (2012). 74 An evolution of the magnetic tape recorder, the computer software Logic Pro 8 works as a multitrack recorder that can record the sound material in different channels.

63

dense texture (in which only the original motif was repeated ad libitum) to a

denser texture, in which all the variations sounded simultaneously. Thus, the

loops gradually came out of sync, generating a sound similar to the pieces of

the Reich’s first phase, such as Come Out (1966) and Piano Phase (1967), in

which Reich sought a composition with a gradual process, in which "pieces of

music that are, literally, processes” (Reich 2002, 34).75

These loops were later omitted from the composition and each audio

was used individually as “thematic development” material. The noise that they

presented, produced by the electric guitar, was treated in such a way that the

final result became less “aggressive”. It is important to emphasize this

aggressive and mechanical characteristic of the sound, because it influenced

the bodies of the dancers, as it generated related motions. In this manner,

traditional variation procedures were applied to the sound material to

horizontally and vertically expand the original motif – i.e., a kind of sound

architecture was executed in the context of changes in which time and space

take shape in a combined form.

In order to execute these transformations, we stretched and

shortened76 the audios, so that the impression of the duration of the events

went back and forth from long to short segments, creating different

impressions of slow and fast events and changing the horizontal perception of

events.

Next we used a pitch shifter77 signal processor (plug in) to alter the

pitch of certain audios. In one of channels the audio was changed with a pitch

shifter 5 semitones above (+5), in the next channel, 7 semitones above (+7)

and in another channel, 12 semitones below (-12). Thus a traditional pattern

of Western music related to the degrees of tones of a scale was observed,

wherein (+5) reflects degree IV, (+7) degree V, and (-12) the octave below I

degree. An artificial harmonic field of the initially noisy and toneless material

was then created, forging a vertical horizon for the musical events of the

piece.

75 See chapter three, page 59. 76 To perform such procedures one must “drag” with the mouse the right edge of the audio up to the desired size while depressing the “option” key on the computer keyboard. 77 Effect of the oscillation of tone (pitch), the note or the sound, upwards or downwards.

64

Along with the modifications in pitch generated by the pitch shifter, a

delay signal processor78 was added, effecting echoes derived from other

audio channels in order to create a context for the “harmonic field” to develop.

Thus, developments and changes were made to the following: the rhythmic

character, the pitches of the “notes” and, consequently, the tones of the

events involved.

Drone is composed of three sections – A, B, A containing an

introduction and an intermediate part (interlude). The piece begins with two

sound ambiences centered on the “a” motif, which undergoes variations

throughout the introduction: delay (34”) and micro phase/delay (47’ to 1’22”).

The first ambience alludes to “concrete urban ambiances.”79 These were

captured in a stereo condenser microphone and chosen both for their rich

textures as well as randomly. The goal was to build a sound that somehow

created a background for the original motif. The second ambience features

events formed by variations of original motif “a” with sound occurrences and

background noise. Electric guitar distortions can be heard (in a crescendo).

Theme A 1’26” a 2’07” is characterized by the use of motif “a” loops:

IMAGE 5 – SHORTENED ORIGINAL MOTIF “a”

Note that after the 7th repetition of reduced motif “a”, other variations of

this same motif appear, presenting a pitch shifter effect 7 semitones above

(V). The variations become more frequent and more varied in size and pitch.

The climax of this section occurs after the 19th repetition of reduced (+5) motif

“a”. The section closes with a single variation of a cut out of the cell of original

78 Effect of the repetition of sound (such as echo); the amount of repetition relative to the original sound source, the number of repetitions and the frequency with which the repetitions are performed can all be controled. 79 Expression associated with concrete music, composed by editing recorded sounds. Term created by Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), a “French radio broadcaster who pioneered the technique in the late 1940s " (Cox and Warner 2009, 413).

65

motif “a”, which is extended and pitch-shifted downwards, thereby eliciting a

low and lasting feeling.

In the interlude, urban ambiences return as “blank” spaces generating

a static sense. Guitar feedback is heard (in a crescendo) as well as in the

introduction. There is a sharp contrast between the sounds and ambiences

that are present in this passage.

Meanwhile in theme B (2'29” to 2'44”) two simultaneous loops are the

highlight; these go in and out of sync, with two short versions (b and b’) of

original motif “a”. The resulting sound is that of a phasing effect. After several

repetitions, other contrasting elements that sound “mechanical” adhere to the

phasing. Below are two illustrations of the two short versions of the motif:

IMAGE 6 – MOTIF b

IMAGE 7 – MOTIF b’ (REDUCED)

Finally, in Theme A (Trio) (3'20” to 3'50”) we find repetitions of reduced

motif “a” at different pitches (+5), (+7) and (-12), thereby creating a kind of

polyphonic trio, with “questions and answers” and pan80 variations between

the elements. Other variations are incorporated into the process and so a new

climax explodes at the end of the piece, characterized by a kind of “leap” in

which an “encounter” of different noises occurs with echoes in fade out81. In

this sense, Tenney’s ideas help to reflect on this event. A moment with a

80 Short for panorama, the term refers to the organization of the events in terms of the auditory panorama, left and right (L & R). 81 When the volume is gradually lowered until there is slience.

66

pronounced and intensive change of a particular parameter functions as a

focal point” and calls the listener's attention. Sudden cuts or moments with

very contrasting elements eventually bring about new ideas or section

closures, as in this case, where the last attack is much higher than the rest of

the piece, “marking” its end.

4.1.2 Dolcerino

The Dolcerino piece was created for Prof. Dr. Mauricio Dottori’s

Advanced Seminars in Composition II class at the Universidade Federal do

Paraná’s graduate school of music. This piece, a priori, was not composed for

dance. This observation will be very important once the choreographic

aspects of the piece are presented. It will be interesting to pay attention to the

ideas of the dancers and the reaction of their bodies when they improvise

movements to a piece that “does not make you want to dance.” (Oliveira

2011, verbal information)

Of a simpler and more cohesive structure than Drone, Dolcerino is

characterized by a traditional binary form in which contrasting clangs 1 and 2

are alternated through the end. The texture of clang 1 changes along the

course of the piece while clang 2, despite a varying frequency at which the

repetitions occur, does not change. Furthermore, the distances between the

sections decrease but the material undergoes little variation, particularly in the

case of clang 2, when compared to Drone.

The teachings of James Tenney are especially useful for distinguishing

the factors of cohesion and segregation between constitutive elements and for

a perception of the greater shape and overall structure of the piece. The first

clang, consisting of guitar distortions and feedback, contains long notes and a

sense of sound fluidity. The second and contrasting clang 2 is composed of

three simultaneous dry and repetitive sounds: digital noise, the “concrete”

sound of boiling water and a midi cymbal sound. Below is the image of the

Logic Pro 8 session and a description of the structure of Dolcerino.

67

IMAGE 8 –LOGIC PRO 8 SESSION OF DOLCERINO

Looking at the illustration, we can conclude that clang 1 (in dark and

light blue) is interspersed by clang 2 (dark green, light green and yellow) as in

an A-B format (binary) with the following main characteristics, according to the

table below:

TABLE 1 – CLANG1 & CLANG2 (MAIN CHARACTERISTICS) OF DOLCERINO

Looking at the table, we can conclude that, with respect to clang 1,

from the beginning of the piece, the proximity fator is what makes the material

sound cohesive, since the material is not repeated in an identical manner,

except at the end of the piece.82 As for clang 2, the constitutive events are

identical (partly because of the predictable and “less lively” nature of the

sound elements), so the similarity factor combined with the repetition factor

generate a sense of cohesion, even when they aren’t relatively close.

82 The initial clang is repeated in an “extended” form, with the application of a filter.

Colors

Sounds

Characteristics clang 1 light blue and dark

blue distorted guitars and guitar feedback

fluid, legato, long notes, freer (rubato) and more indefinite pulse

clang 2 light green, dark green and yellow

digital distortion, concrete sound of boiling water and midi cymbal sound

rhythmic, “industrial”, machine, staccato, events interspersed with sudden pauses.

68

The re-exposure of clang 1 at the end of the piece has two types of

variation: the first consists of the lengthening of the shape, since a

lengthening process was applied, and the second refers to the frequency of

the sound, since a filter was applied – like a wah-wah83 guitar pedal –

conveying the effect of "failure" and thus disturbing the sound. In this manner,

the most important factor in generating the clang is the perception of similarity

and a lack of close proximity between the materials. However, the repetition of

sound events is also relevant in this case, since the figure brings back to the

listener, in his memory, the initial clang 1 of the piece, which occasionally

helps us notice a sense of completion in the passage.

4.1.3 Plano Primo

Of the three pieces included in this research, Plano Primo is the only

one with traditional music materials. The use of musical notes and the key of

D minor differentiated this piece from the previous two, both noisier and with

no defined pitches. Apart from the use of a well-defined tonality, the use of

percussion instruments such as the marimba, glockenspiel and kalimba

among others, as well as the use of two pianos – performing the same

melodic idea with phasing harmonics and sub-melodies – suggests an

approximation to the sound of Steve Reich’s music. Although the choices

regarding tonal material, instrumentation and compositional technique were

made intuitively, there was, indeed, a desire to honor the composer, the main

inspiration for this research.

In spite of this context, the piece originated from a specific sound, an

urban soundscape captured for Drone that stood out for its texture and

expressiveness. Through the sound of a car horn that generated a minor third

interval, a melodic line was created (main theme) that served as the embryo

to an exercise in counterpoint, producing new music material to create a new

piece. On the Plano Primo original score, the first cell appears (still in the

original key of C# minor in the 1st page) and, in the systems below, it is the

same idea already in D minor developed for 3 voices.

83 An effects processor very popular among guitarrists which modifies the frequency of the sound.

69

IMAGE 9 – MAIN THEME OF THE 1ST SECTION OF PLANO PRIMO

IMAGE 10 – ORIGINAL SCORE OF PLANO PRIMO

I then wrote the theme of the first section for a possible string quartet. I

developed the theme using some counterpoint rules, rewriting it in other

voices in the 4th and 5th of the orginal key, 'G' and 'A' respectively.

IMAGE 11 – THEME 5TH ABOVE (IN A) OF THE 1ST SECTION OF PLANO PRIMO.

70

When exporting the material in midi format to Logic Pro 8, other

instruments such as the marimba, kalimba and glockenspiel, among others,

were chosen for the execution of the melodic material. Gradually a

homogeneous context, where many repetitions, treated with small and almost

imperceptible variations, began to be established. Sometimes the subject was

initiated by a quarter note or an eighth note sooner or later than expected,

causing a subtle process of delay on the material.

IMAGE 12 – MAIN THEME, THEME ON THE 4TH AND 5TH (DOUBLED) “DELAYED”

The second main event of the piece consists of piano tremolos. As a

background texture, there is the sound of birds, cars, conversations etc. The

stereo condenser microphone used to make the recording, the same used to

record soundscapes, captured the sound of the sound environment. Thus, the

material resulting from chance was strategically inserted into the composition,

creating a context that radically contrasts with the first portion of the piece.84

This fortuitous accident was part of the creative process and informed

the choices that followed, including the synthetic form of section C of the

84 The first part was originally generated from a score editing program and subsequently recorded with midi percussion instruments (i.e., a simulation through samplers). However, the contrast of this new section doesn’t just succeed because of the instrumentation or the notes played (still in D minor key), but mainly because of the ambience presented in part B.

71

piece. In this section, the elements that make up Part A and B merge – the

rhythmic aspect of the main theme becomes highlighted, along with the urban

soundscapes – and there is an increase in noise and concrete sounds,

particularly of ocean waves. Thus, it was from this initially haphazard choice,

but not totally unconscious, as there was an apprehension of the

“contrapuntal” character of the sea waves, that the title of the dance video

Vagão emerged. The term refers to a train car, to a bending bus, but it also

plays with the augmentative of the word 'vaga,' which in Portuguese is

synonymous with ‘onda’, or ‘wave’.85

Below is a brief description of the structure of the piece Plano Primo:

Introduction – urban soundscapes (buses and street); Part A – the first theme,

in counterpoint, is performed by percussion instruments; Part B – piano

tremolos and concrete sounds of ocean waves; Part C – percussion sounds

from Part A return at the same time as the piano sounds of Part B, and some

concrete sounds are incorporated; Coda – concrete sounds, soundscapes

and rhythmic variations of the main theme supplant the original melodic

sounds; the "background" becomes "figure". The association of urban

soundscapes with various concrete sounds/noises and musical notes

presupposes Tenney’s notions of hierarchy and inclusion, i.e., the potential

equivalence of all the sounds in the musical composition. Furthermore, the

distinction of sound events follows principles that are similar to those already

presented in Dolcerino.

A table of the sound structure of Plano Primo is shown below:

Soundscapes Musical notes Instruments Noises

Part A Car horn, motorcycles, bus, “door closing”

Main theme in D minor, variations in A and G (counterpoint)

Marimba, kalimba, glockenspiel, bass drum

Part B Sea waves, siren, tremolos in D minor Pianos (2)

Part C Return of the car horn, bus

Tremolos Pianos,

percussion

Digital noises, sounds of steps

TABLE 2 – SOUND STRUCTURE OF PLANO PRIMO

85 The correct augmentative for 'vaga' would actually be ‘vagalhão’.

72

Although it intersperses materials from various sources such as noise,

soundscapes and traditional music elements, and varies the sound of the

reverb and the ambience between its sections, Plano Primo is a piece that

offers fewer surprises, both rhythmic and melodic, than Drone and Dolcerino.

As this material was less atypical, the dancers felt no awkwardness or

difficulty in dialoguing with the composition, which enabled from the start an

atmosphere of greater interaction between them, to be addressed further in

the research.

4.2 Improvisation Choreographic Procedures

The music first. I couldn’t move without a reason and the reason is music. (Ballanchine quoted in Steinberg 1980, 127)

My first contact with choreographer and dancer Eunice de Oliveira

happened through a mutual friend, a rehearser from BTG – Balé do Teatro

Guaíra, in June 2010. I sent her an email and after a brief meeting, in

which we discussed topics, procedures, the number of dancers that should

be involved in the work and other practical issues, Oliveira agreed to take

part in the research. We decided to invite four dancers.

Below is a description of our first meeting with the Teatro Guaíra

dancers held on May 6, 2011. Eunice, Alessandra, Lucas e Raphael were

present:

I introduced myself, talked about the research and gave copies of the

thesis introduction to the choreographer and the dancers. We talked about the

proposal and possible themes, about research on merging the worlds of

dance and music, about the use of the term “sculpture in motion” from

Alexander Calder’s book of hanging mobile images. Lastly, I mentioned the

idea of performing a dance in a subway car or, to adapt the idea to Curitiba, in

a "tube" (bus stop for bi-articulated buses). I commented on the current trend

of performing dance pieces for small spaces and on how we could use these

limiting spaces creatively.

73

It was decided that the main practical objective of the research would

be to create a performance at a bus stop in Curitiba, and this choice would

therefore be a limiting factor in the spatial exploration of the dancers’

movements86. Rehearsals would thus be performed at the BTG studio to

prepare, through studies or improvisation experiments, the interaction

between music and dancers.

Below is a photo of a bus stop (“tube”) in the city of Curitiba:

IMAGE 13 – CITY OF CURITIBA BUS STOP SOURCE: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1350999&page=2

The next day I sent the dancers the musical themes I had been writing

since the beginning of the research: Drone, inspired by Reich's gradual

processes; Ambiente, concrete ambient sounds, such as the elevator, TV and

people talking, placed side by side to create a living environment; Dolcerino,

an electroacoustic piece inspired by the book by James Tenney, who used

guitar distortion and digital noise sounds; Plano Primo, an exercise in

counterpoint with percussion instruments like the kalimba, glockenspiel,

marimba, among others; Dominóstinato, a piece that was partly inspired by

John Cage's indeterminate processes.

Below is the testimony of dancer Alessandra Lange, who

spontaneously shared her personal impressions after the first listening:

86 After participating in the Dance et Musique: Dialogues in en Mouvement congress in February 2011 in the city of Montreal, I noticed a trend in choreographies created for limited spaces such as bathrooms and other spaces where space limitations determe body movement.

74

Words that came to my mind, that were related to the movement of those sounds to me ... they are my first images ... To me, the tube seems even more perfect, the music has enough movement, I don’t think the movement of the subway is needed. I like the idea of stillness with movement around it, which is the perspective that the tube offers: Drone - cuts, nocturnal urgency, extremities, repetition, trance, alone, urban; Ambiente - external noise x internal noise (opposition), differences stillness, quiet; Dolcerino – internal, relationships, hands, sensitive; Plano Primo – continued flow, stroll, reflection, lightness; Dominóstinato - questions, conflict, introspective, unrest, curves. (Lange 2011, e-mail)

It is interesting to notice the use of expressions of intersection between

music and dance87 in the impressions given by Lange, words that somehow

served to translate what the music echoed in the perception of the dancer.

Some expressions stood out in their suggestion of movement and

perception: “lightness,” as a reaction to the counterpoint in minor key with

pleasant timbres of percussion instruments (like the marimba and the

kalimba) and “continuous flow” (a term that is typical of the field of dance88).

In addition, some words pointed to a specific body part, such as

“hands” and “extremities” or forms such as “curves,” as well as an intrinsic

mood such as “urgent”, “quiet”, “conflict” (...) words that suggested movement

but also drama. Some words indicated a place, for instance, “urban”, “night”, a

place where the “action took place”.

During the research some conceptual ideas emerged to direct the

process of improvisation, such as the suggestion of actions or keywords that

might stimulate some type of movement, but at first there was no prerequisite

for movement, only the sound, as an impulse for body motion.

With time, Oliveira and I observed that that some parts could be longer

to allow time for the dancers to develop their ideas. Bodies – and each body

reacts in its own way – need time to “respond emotionally” to music. As

pointed out by composer Wallingford Riegger in the article Synthesizing Music

and Dance (1934):

...the dancer’s subjective reaction to music is brought into play, that is, we have a pure individual expression, as no two dancers react in just the same way to a given piece of music. Here the matter of emotional response enters in, which at one endows the dance with a richer content than that of the set forms. (quoted in Teck 2011, 60)

87 An aspect of the intersection between “occurring arts” (Langer 1980, 167). 88 Expression belonging to the movement theories of researcher, artist and choreographer Rudolf Von Laban developed in Germany in the first half of the twentieth centruy.

75

4.3 Improvisation sessions

In this section we will describe what we observed during some of the

improvisation sessions in the dance studio. The criteria used for selecting

specific moments is tied to the identification of results concerning the

interaction between music and dance, as well as the recurrence of body

movements influenced by sound. In fact, the following question then arises:

does the dance duplicate or add information to the music?89 This question, in

turn, leads us to the concepts of musical visualization, counterpoint and

complement90, which were presented earlier and which served to support our

overall understanding of the relationship between music and dance in the

sections we described. Furthermore, the use of repetition served as support

for organizing the structure of the “choreo-musical” material performed in the

improvisation sessions.

The table below outlines the preparation and rehearsal improvisation

sessions that took place in the dance studio. The table includes: rehearsal

dates; pieces used; dancers involved in each improvisation and the duration

of each session:

Dates Pieces Dancers Duration 05/25/2011 Drone; Plano Primo Eunice, Alessandra and Rafael 22’

06/10/2011 Dolcerino; Plano Primo; Drone Eunice, Alessandra and Lucas 28’

08/08/2011 Drone; Drone/Plano Primo Eunice, Alessandra, Rafael and Reinaldo

20’

08/18/2011 Drone; Drone/Plano Primo;

Drone/Plano Primo/ Dolcerino

Alessandra, Rafael and Lucas 20’

TABLE 3 – IMPROVISATION SESSIONS91

89 This relationship of mutual influence between sound and body movement can be absorbed based on the issue raised by philosopher Roland Barthes on the relationship between text and illustration: “Does the image duplicate certain of the informations [sic] given in the text by a phenomenon of redundancy or does the text add fresh information to the image?" (1977, 38) In replacing the words image with dance and text with sound, one realizes the analogy of such a question in relation to this research: does dance imitate music or does it add information to it? 90 Complement can be a synonymous to echo between music and dance. (Jordan) 91 When there are two or three compositions in the table separated by a slash (e.g. Drone/Plano) this means that in this session the two pieces were executed without pause; they were connected.

76

4.3.1 Drone - 05/20/2011

The music refers to a solitary act (Eunice 2011, verbal information).

Besides being the first improvisation session performed in the dance

studio, Drone 5/20 was chosen to be described first due to the spontaneous

character of the movements that took place. The dancers were given

complete freedom, and for about 6 minutes, at first, they sought individual

relationships with the music and subsequently found patterns of interaction

between them. Note that at first the dancers performed musical visualization

movements and that later, once they became familiar with the music, they

sought more complex relationships.

Below is a description of the Drone 05/20 improvisation session92. Our

main focus was to find recurrences and consistent movements according to

the parameters raised in Chapter 1, especially regarding the musical

visualizations in the movement of dancer Alessandra Lange:

0’00” - 2’16” the 3 dancers are each occupying his/her own space: Eunice stands still with her “body awake”; (Wosniak93, 2011) Raphael is situated laterally tilted to the right, well supported on the ground, left arm forming a curve. Alessandra facing Raphael with arms along her body, right shoulder slightly strained upwards, giving a sense that the right arm is “hanging” (with the right foot leaving the ground at half pointe and the weight of the body on the left side). The delays in the music trigger light repetitive lateral movements by Alessandra, as a kind of musical visualization. 0'30” Raphael bends his knees and goes down with arms outstretched. Later, the dancer takes a step toward Alessandra, in a sort of anticipation of what the music will do. 0'50" With the start of the original motif of the music, Raphael bends his knees moving them from side to side. Alessandra, still in the same starting position, lifts her right elbow making a rocking motion with the forearm with accent toward the ceiling and her right leg forward. At 0'54", there is a repetition of the motif, but with more volume. Alessandra stretches her right arm forward (freestyle swimming position), rotates the body and repeats the movement with her back to the bar. 1'31” Start of the ostinato. Alessandra repeats and alternates the 3 movements: the freestyle movement with her right arm, the elbow towards the ceiling and the swinging that spins the body back (en dehors). (while bending and stretching her knees to the music).

92 Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FaP0DxlIUU> 93 Position in which the body is still but on the verge of moving. (Wosniak, C. Teorias do movimento (Theories of Motion). Curitiba, 8/11/2011. Class given at the Universidade Federal do Paraná.)

77

2'03“ Alessandra stretches both arms (freestyle position) and tries to go forward, but Raphael occupies this space. The dancer then goes back to her original place and turns towards the bar (Eunice executes her movements with pauses between the repetitions). 2'14” The ostinato is interrupted with the lengthened musical motif, becoming “out of tune” towards the lower end. Raphael and Alessandra move towards the floor, interrupting the flow of their movements according to the descent in the music. Eunice follows the other dancers taking on the lower plane. 2'29” Theme B: Eunice begins to move through the spaces, going to the bar and back. Alessandra follows this idea and also goes to the front. Raphael, in a more static posture, rotates his torso at 90 degrees to the ground. 2'52” Consequently there is an interaction among the dancers, influenced by the music. Eunice passes under Raphael’s arm, going to the floor and then getting up. She rotates her arm, mimicking the Alessandra’s initial movement. 3'04” All dancers are semi static on a lower plane. All dancers are seated. The music gradually becomes mechanical, a machine that does not motivate movement. The dancers stand still. 3'21” The original musical motif returns, this time not as ostinato but with pitch variations. Alessandra “coherently” returns to the elbow and arm movements, but now on her knees, and then moves her torso back and forth. Eunice is still, “awake” in the middle plane and Raphael is opposite Alessandra with his left leg bent at 90 degrees and the right one stepped back (head slightly tilted back). 3'30” With the variations of motif, Alessandra spins and rises to the middle plane, repeats the initial spinning movement with her elbows, stretching her arms forward (freestyle) and returns to the elbow movement with a slight kick from the left leg . Eunice begins to make fast movements towards the bar and comes back spinning to then return to the bar. Meanwhile, Alessandra, after moving down and up, repeated the movements of stretching her arms and elbows sideways with a kick of the right leg. The repeated movements begin to fade out as does the music. 3’58” all on the ground.

At this point we had to apply Henri Cowell’s principle of elastic forms,

since the original music had ended and the dancers continued to dance even

without music. The Logic Pro 8 software was used in a kind of formal

improvisation; motifs, themes and integral parts of the musical material (block-

units) were repeated intuitively in an attempt to dialogue with the movements

of the dancers.

4'00” As the music repeats the ostinato motif 1'31” passage, Alessandra again begins moving back her right elbow and right shoulder, and Eunice mimics Alessandra’s movement, performing a canon. Alessandra plunges forward with her torso and head and Eunice responds with the same motion with a slight delay. Alessandra throws her arms with bent elbows forward, stretches back her right arm horizontally and then raises her right elbow repeating the first gesture, spinning around the axis of the knees. Eunice copies all of the movements to the ostinato rhythm until she gets up.

78

4'21” The dancers interact and move at the center of the space. Movements and planes are copied, each in their own way. 4'45” Alessandra repeats her cycle of movements: elbows rotate, the right arm goes forward in a freestyle position, alternating small forward leg kicks and spins around the body axis, as in a restatement of the theme . 5'01" The dancers are on the floor. Raphael appropriates the movements of Alessandra’s outstretched arm and interacts with it and with Eunice. 5'17”- 5'22” The motif of the music dissolves in the lower notes again. Everyone is standing, thereby generating a sense of counterpoint. Alessandra ends the improvisation, in a coherent manner, with a movement of the elbow followed by the arm and a spinning of the body. Ending in the same position of 2'14”, arms outstretched, one forward and one backward at 180 degrees, but this time not attached to the bar. 5'35” Alessandra is standing still, “awake”, arms close to the body with her back to the others and facing the bar. 5'43” - 5'56” The dancers are static, the music returns to the sound of the introduction with urban ambiences. One can almost “see the silence” in their bodies.

IMAGE 14 – IMAGE OF THE ENDING OF DRONE

The interaction between music and dance in the Drone 5/20

improvisation session went in two directions: in the music-dance direction, in

which the music drives the repetition of body patterns similar to the music,

and in reverse, in the dance-music direction, in which the body movements of

the dancers served as a basis for the improvisation of block-units of music by

the composer. Here we resort to Henri Cowell’s concept regarding adapting

the music to the “fluctuations” of the dance (quoted in Teck 2011, 86). In this

79

manner, the use of elastic forms occurs after the original music ends, when

the dancers continued to dance, even “in silence”. So the solution was to

repeat passages of the composition, which in fact contributed to the unity of

the piece.

It is worth noting that only after the start of the repetition and variation

of the music’s block-units (4'00”) did the dancers begin to interact with one

another, as if the repetition of “known” music passages provided some

assuredness for the creation of movements in which there was greater

exchange, imitation and interaction among the dancers.

The table below details the dancers’ path of improvisation in Drone

5/20 in terms of their choreographic exploration. Through this table it is

possible to determine the incidence of choreographic procedures according

to: free individual exploration, creation of repetitive patterns, movement

appropriations by other dancers (pairs) and patterns involving the entire

group:

Improvisation by free exploration (at the beginning of the activity)

Exploration of repetitive movements in a quest for choreographical standards X musical standards

Choreographic explorations involving movements from other dancers (pairs)

Choreographic explorations involving the entire group

Alessan-

dra

Defines the sequence of moves early on. With the repetition of music and consequently of the movements, begins to create variations upon the phrasing. Acquiring fluidity and exploring the different spaces.

00’48” lifts right elbow, which “reverberates” to the music; 00’56” spins outstretched right arm; 1’15” spins both outstretched arms; 1’17” repeats arm movements, followed by left elbow. After a few repetitions of previous movements, spin 1’31”.

4’02” (on the ground) Begins canon with right elbow and then head plunges to the left and arms plunge forward. Then only right arm, right and left elbow followed by spin. Gets up 4’17”

2’11” (all go towards the ground performing a visualization of the lower frequencies of the music.) Alessandra bends her knees and stretches her arms with her back to the bar.

Eunice Performs phrases followed by pauses. After a few repetitions, the movement is triggered in a fast and diversified manner.

1’16” facing bar, stretches right arm vertically, spins body towards mirror with arm stretched horizontally, repeats movement always adding another movement.

4’04” (on the ground) imitates Alessandra’s movements (canon) until 4’15” when she returns to the bar on her feet.

2’11” one knee bent and another on the ground, right arm on the bar facing Alessandra.

80

Raphael Seems to feel the music with his trunk, using the arms. Feet and legs with less movement allowing a play on the high, middle and lower planes in bending his knees.

00’48” rotates knees laterally, creating an opposition with head, reacts to the accents of the music; 1’10” facing the bar, with bent knees, lifts arms with slightly arched torso. 4’02” repeats arm movements facing the mirror.

Some arm movements similar to Alessandra’s throughout the piece.

2’11” with his back to Alessandra, fully stretched legs and right hand on the bar.

TABLE 4 – TABLE OF THE IMPROVISATION PATH

In terms of free exploration, each dancer sought a way to relate to the

music: Alessandra created a phrase of movements: elbow, arm in freestyle

and spin; Eunice, in turn, formed movements interspersed by pauses and

Raphael alternated between the high, middle and low planes. However, the

interaction between the dancers only actually occurred after the three dancers

directed themselves to the ground, and this was the moment when they

performed a kind of collective musical visualization94 at the end of Theme A.

During the improvisations some of Alessandra’s movement cells were

assimilated by other dancers, thereby generating a canon at 4'00” between

Alessandra and Eunice.

The improvisation session concludes with the completion of coherent

movements by the three dancers. Alessandra is standing with her back to the

bar, still and “awake”, in the same manner as Eunice was at the start of the

session; Eunice, in turn, displays a pause in the movement with angled

elbows, arms and right leg, dialoguing with Alessandra’s opening phrases,

while Raphael performs a movement of descent into the lower plane.95

In a brief meeting before the Drone (8/8) improvisation experiment, the

dancers, Eunice, Alessandra and Reinaldo, gave testimony relevant to the

understanding of the influence of music in dance. On this occasion two

musical concepts were introduced: ostinato and motif. The intention on

Oliveira’s and my part was to somehow drive the improvisations, limiting the

body movements of the dancers. Excerpts of the conversation are reproduced

below:

94 That is if we associate (make an analogy) low sounds with the lower plane, the ground. 95 The movements of the dancers kept the duality between exploring movements on their feet and on the ground and did not include jumps, given the limited space of our research, the dimensions of the tube (bus stop).

81

Researcher: One of these words [...] that we use a lot in music, is motif. I don’t know whether you use it as well... All: No! Reinaldo: It depends on the connotation. Researcher: Motif is a short cell that you use... Alessandra: Does it reappear? Reinaldo: We do that a lot; we create a cell and keep working on it. Alessandra: In different ways. Researcher: I think that this could be a direction. The other word we use a lot is ostinato. Reinaldo: We also use this [...] it’s to insist on an idea. To propose something and insist on it several times. Researcher: And throughout the repetitions something happens that the repetitions start changing. Reinaldo: The dynamics changes. Researcher: Drone is just that: repetition until you drop. All those noises were the same cell. But sometimes I prolonged the cell, changed the pitch, reversed the cell, shredded it and so I kept repeating the cell. That is what Drone means in music, that riff, that lick, this thing that repeats forever. Reinaldo: A single thing, made in many different ways. Alessandra: The first time we did [improvisation (5/20)] a lot of repetition was generated. It's the music that generates a lot of ... you make a 1st movement and it reverberates this way [...] generates repetition. [...] The only thing that did not happen is [...] to have a cell [...] to approach it differently, not that. It happened in this thing of repeating, because there’s the 1st “vum tum tum”. You know when your body sort of reverberates through a movement?

Alessandra’s comments clearly reflect a visualization of the music,

since the dancer is practically describing the delay effect of the original motif

of Drone.

Alessandra: I remember I made big arm movements. It really was the music because [in BTG96] we're working with small movements. It's cool [...] not thinking about what really is your first impulse, because sometimes that's what the music “told you”.

The dancers then positioned themselves and the improvisation of

Drone (8/8) began, in which one realizes that – despite the fact that every

body involved in the experiment was influenced by the music in a distinct and

personal manner – somehow the focus on creating motifs and in repeating the

same (previously agreed upon limits), as well as the appropriation of these

motifs by others (“contamination”)97, had an effect on the material improvised

by the dancers, providing unity to the dance and a link between the two arts in

question.98

96 Balé do Teatro Guaíra. 97 Expression suggested by Alessandra in a statement (8/8). 98 Drone 8/8 video available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsIjF_fol2A>

82

4.3.2 Dolcerino – 6/10/2011

The impression is that it [the music] doesn’t take us anywhere. (Oliveira 2011, verbal information)

Because of Dolcerino’s natural ineptitude for dance, as observed by

Oliveira, another type of reflection and analysis was made, in which prominent

moments throughout the dance were studied in relation to the music. For this

exercise, we used images taken from videos (Dolce 1, Dolce 2 and Dolce 3)

of the Dolcerino improvisation sessions that took place on June 10, 2011 with

dancers Alessandra, Eunice and Lucas. These images were taken with a

moving camera and were labeled according to the movement suggested by

the dance or the location of the dancers. These labels do not obey any

standard or predefined system; they were merely suggestions to differentiate

the moments from one another during the session.

During the encounter of the composer with the dancers, the composer

did not perform any “elastic” improvisation to the form of the music (as in

Drone). The improvisation path of the piece, however, required that its entire

form be repeated four times. Keeping in mind the ideas of James Tenney

about the principles of perception of form in the visual arts, we notice an

incidence of 2/1 pattern groupings, in which two dancers perform similar

movements simultaneously while the third dancer moves in a contrasting

form.99

As for the use of the video camera (which in this session was handheld

and not in a fixed position), we found that not only the body motions of the

dancers were influenced by the music, but that the movement of the camera

was also influenced by the dancers motions. At some points the camera was

positioned in front and at other times alongside the dancers, forming a ninety-

degree viewing angle (on the other sides of the room there was a mirror and a

wall). Thus it was possible to capture different “frames”.

Below are some images that served as an example for an analysis of

the relationship between music and dance in the studio:

99 Alessandra and Eunice versus Lucas, Alessandra and Lucas versus Eunice and in rare occasions the 3 dancers would converge in the same cell or position, as in, for example, the clang 1 tables re-exposure and diagonal.

83

IMAGE 15 – CLANG 1 – PRESENTATION.

Above we can see Lucas moving with his arm raised and elbow bent

behind his head after spinning with his body at the end of clang1, performing

a visualization of the music. The movement was reproduced by the dancer

and, with a little variation, the other dancers100 on the re-exposure of clang1.

IMAGE 16 – CLANG 1 – RE-EXPOSURE

Next, we identified the formation of lines and diagonals from one end of

the choreographical space to the other by observing the movements of the

100 A procedure that Alessandra labeled “contamination” (Lange 2011).

84

dancers in the video. This observation was made at “low speed” to better

absorb the movements frame by frame. At that moment the camera was

positioned so as to reveal the spatial design of the diagonal formed by the

three dancers as part of the choreography.

IMAGE 17 – DIAGONAL (Dolce 2 - 3’16”)

As for clang 2, the video Dolce 3 (1'16”- 2'04”)101 made it easier for

composer to clearly identify repeat elements in the movements of the

dancers. Even though the music is not present in this passage, the dancers

continue to dance as if influenced by the rhythm of the clang. Lucas and

Alessandra then develop a sort of canon, in which movements of laterally

lowering and raising the bodies stand out. This tendency on the part of the

dancers to perform a music visualization of clang 2 materializes as an echo102

since the musical rhythm was present in the movement of the dancers. In this

context, the interaction between music and dance produces a form of

“resonance” of the music in the movement – the dancers produce canons

101 Dolce 1 available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSDNHK7bg1c> Dolce 2 at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYI0epclCPo> e Dolce 3 em: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cMHY2HlwJE> 102 “Or sometimes there is anticipation like the music goes ‘de ra de ra de ra de ra’ and then later the dance, without the music, goes ‘de ra de ra de ra de ra’. Or an echo like high notes ‘ta ta ta ta’ and then the dancers kick their legs or move high but maybe after, a resonance, later” (Jordan 2010).

85

amongst one another, but in a broader context, they constitute an echo in

relation to the music.

As can be seen in the images below:

IMAGE 18 – ECHO CLANG 2 (LUCAS)

IMAGE 19 – ECHO CLANG 2 (ALESSANDRA)

86

IMAGE 20 – ECHO CLANG 2 (EUNICE)

Through these images we can infer that clangs 1 and 2 influenced in a

decisive manner the bodies of the dancers in distinct ways. Indeed, the

correlation of clang 1 in the dance refers to Lucas’ fluid, spinning movements.

These, in turn, had a direct influence on the perception and movements of the

two other dancers. Clang 2, on the other hand, drier and more repetitive (with

a “machine” effect), generated movements of lowering and raising the

bodies.103

The presence of similarity in the interaction between the dancers, in

general, is characterized by the recurrence of 2/1 patterns – i.e., two dancers

perform similar movements simultaneously, forming a kind of choreographic

clang, while the third dancer moves in a contrasting manner. Sometimes this

contrast appears in the middle of the “frame”, creating a symmetrical image,

for example, in "Pendulum". Lucas and Eunice form a grouping and

Alessandra stands apart, creating a counterpoint; sometimes this divergence

occurs among the dancers in the corner of the “frame” as in “Bar 1”, in which

Eunice has her knees bent (“low plane”), while Alessandra and Lucas have

their bodies arched backwards (“middle plane”).

103 Keeping in mind that each dancer responds to impulses in a personal way and that only with other, more thorough, experiences, could we say, without a shadow of doubt, that a specific sound generated a particular movement.

87

Two other important examples of counterpoint, accordingly, are carried

out when Eunice, in stretching up her left arm, contrasts with Alessandra and

Lucas, which in turn are crouched with their hands on the bar. And in “Bar 3”,

Lucas leans back on the bar while Alessandra and Eunice, with knees bent,

rest their heads sideways on the bar, creating a clang between the bodies

through configurations of similarity and proximity:

IMAGE 21 – PENDULUM (L and E versus A)

IMAGE 22 – BAR 1 (L and A versus E)

88

IMAGE 23– BAR 2 (L and A versus E)

IMAGE 24 – BAR 3 (A and E versus L)

Finally, although we do not intend to discuss relations between

movement and meaning of the images extracted from videos, it is interesting

to note how one of the videos, Dolce 2, provided crucial images for a

reflection on the role of video documentation and the interference of the

camera in the representation of dance. The next three tables (Ending 1, 2 and

3) show how the approximation of the camera (zoom) determined the

expressive character of the segment.104 In the frame “Ending 1”, in which

104 Interpretations and conclusions related to the study of semiotics and theories on the audio-

89

Eunice stands in between the other dancers, the scene is distant, a fact that is

perceived by the distance of the bar closest to the camera.

IMAGE 25 – ENDING 1

In the frame “Ending 2”, Eunice begins to open her arms and creates,

due to her proximity, a symmetrical figure with respect to the other dancers. In

this scene, the closest bar can be seen


visual were left out of our analyses and descriptions, remaining as an extension of the topic for further research.

90

Finally, in the frame “Ending 3”, the camera came close enough to

reinforce and contribute to the closing character of the improvisation/piece,

adding expressiveness to Eunice’s opening of arms movement while the

music replayed clang 1.


Thus, since this is a piece where two very contrasting sections

alternate, in the improvisation of Dolcerino (6/10) two diverging trends in

choreography regarding dynamics and quality were generated. While clang 1

determined in part the search for fluid but irregular movements, which have a

higher degree of difficulty,105 clang 2, given its more repetitive nature, was

represented through movements of “lowering and raising” the bodies. The

noisy, machine-type sound of clang 2 also contributed to the reverberation of

sound on the bodies of the dancers, even after the music stopped, causing a

movement in the shape of an echo. In addition, the formation of 2/1 patterns

during the improvisation seems to reflect a need on the part of dancers to

band together and communicate, since the music “did not take them

anywhere” (Oliveira 2011, verbal information).

105 Taking into account the intrinsic relationship bewteen rhythm and motion introduced in chapter 1 (22).

91

4.3.3 Plano Primo

In the Plano Primo improvisation sessions, the dancers had no trouble

interacting right from the start, as they were probably stimulated by a music

that made use of more traditional sound materials, such as a defined tonality,

instrumentation and counterpoint technique, generating a sense of familiarity

with the music.

Emphasis was placed on the recurrence of movements in sessions:

5/20, when there were lines, playful games and interactions at the bar; 6/10,

when patterns in duos by Alessandra and Lucas were observed during

tremolos; 8/8, when already in the second part (“B”) of the music, when the

pianos phase out, Reinaldo lifts Alessandra’s body; and 8/15, when obeying

the limitations imposed by the choreographer, the dancers then get in line,

progress into a play with arms, move towards the bar and perform a duo as

part of an actual rehearsal of the final product, the dance video Vagão.

In Plano Primo, there is a greater incidence of lines, patterns and

games, in which the three dancers partcipate, than in the two other pieces.

Therefore, these structures created by the dancers' interactions with respect

to the music can also be seen as clangs. In these improvisations, however,

repetitive movement and random choices were more important in driving the

integration processes between music and dance, thereby also impacting

Vagão.

IMAGE 28 – BODIES SUPPORTING ONE ANOTHER – 5/20

92

During the improvisations, we could identify through the smile on the

faces of the dancers a playful aspect in the movements “provided by the

music”. This tone of “playfulness” and games proved to be an intrinsic feature

of Plano Primo. In all of the improvisation experiments in which this piece was

used, this characteristic was present and influenced body movement.

IMAGE 29 – DANCERS IN LINE NEXT TO THE BAR – 8/15

IMAGE 30 – LINES, BODIES LEANING FORWARD

Patterns of repetition were present in the sessions: arms that entwine,

bodies that support one another, places being exchanged and shared

movements on the bar are the main features of the body movements in this

93

piece. It is as if the dancers sought to illustrate the contrapuntal phrasing of

the music, creating in a broader perspective, a parallel with the music.

IMAGE 31 –GAMES WITH ARMS, INTERACTION

IMAGE 32 – GAMES WITH ARMS, INTERACTION 2

Another noteworthy observation is the dancers’ tendency to approach

the bar during the first moments of the piece. There might be some

relationship between the music and classical ballet structures, or with

movement patterns associated with more traditional spaces – which allowed

for the creative use of the bar, not only as a safety support, but also as a

means of transgression of the space (both vertically and horizontally).

94

IMAGE 33 – USE OF THE BAR

IMAGE 34 - USE OF THE BAR 2

Apart from encouraging a tendency towards games, lines and

movements at the bar, Plano Primo, from its onset, provoked movements in

which the dancers touched one another and repeated patterns in pairs or in

groups. Along these lines, Reinaldo did a body lift of Alessandra, exactly at

the time that the pianos began the phasing process. A new parallelism seems

to have occurred in this case. The lack of gravity or harmonic dissonance

relates to an upward movement.

95

IMAGE 35 - PATTERNS IN PAIRS 6/10

IMAGE 36 - PHASING 1 - 8/8

96

IMAGE 37 - PHASING 2

The tendency to create duos or similar and simultaneous movements

between two dancers was also observed during the Plano Primo

improvisation sessions. These patterns would later be encouraged by the

choreographer, as Eunice and Alessandra’s statements after session 8/8106

reveal:

Eunice: In Plano Primo there is the tendency to go to the bar. Alessandra: But is that a good thing? Eunice: I think it’s cool, then you can play with weight, with height...I think there could be a few walks, a few changing of places. Which happened a few times in the first...There’s a moment when it fells like a duet will take place.

To complete this analysis, we noticed that in the last improvisation

session on 8/15107, before Vagão was shot, the dancers, in listening to the

phasing of the pianos, went after patterns that emphasized both the

exchanges of movement between them and the creation of duos.

106 Plano Primo 8/8 available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRczqdvoAOc> 107 Videos available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onKnVR5nGnY> e <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmgZECXl6b4>

97

IMAGE 38 - PHASING 15/8

IMAGE 39 - PHASING 2 - 8/15

“What matters more, the freshness of an emergent idea or the careful

predetermined craft of the work?” This issue raised by Kloppenberg takes us

to the intersection that exists between the improvisation process and

conducting a rehearsal with compositional purposes (188).

Kloppenberg argues that the strength of improvisation lies in combining

the unconscious impulse with conscious rearrangement, something that

actually occurred during the improvisation sessions of Plano Primo. The

choreographer and the dancers became familiar with the music, "after

98

transforming improvised content into fixed movement.” This material was then

compositionally recreated in preparation for the dance-video, "recreating

selected improvised moments or structural elements as building blocks, and

integrating into choreographed work a movement texture and performance

tone that retains the active presence, impulsivity, and spontaneity of the initial

improvisations (2010, 190).

Thus, the improvisation sessions in the studio provided the raw

material for the choreographic processes of the dance video Vagão. The play

with arms, the trips to the bar (since the “tube” enabled this analogy)108 and

Reinaldo’s lift of Alessandra were kept as “markers” or structural points in the

music, which, in a reciprocal way, turned into a “map” for the performance of

movements (Pereira 2011, verbal information).

4.4 Video dance: Vagão – 2/9/2012109

The first factor to be taken into account with the video dance is the

multidisciplinary nature of a work that combines different forms of artistic

expression. In addition to the spatial and temporal relationships that the

musical and choreographic elements already encourage in one another, a

third vehicle of artistic expression is introduced: the video. Given this

multiplicity, many alternatives forming a unit and a structure contribute to the

creation of the final product.

In the documentary videos of the improvisations performed in the

dance studio, regardless of whether a fixed or hand-held camera was being

used, there was no external influence regarding assembly or editing, no

choice of “what” to show or “how” to sort the images.110 With the dance video,

however, the “interference” of the camera with the movements of the dancers

was more of a decisive factor. The “eye” of the camera in more or less closed

planes, the zoom and other movements all influenced and added meaning to

the work as a whole.

108 The bus stop in Curitiba has a red bar that is much thicker than the one at the dance studio, so the analogy between the two spaces was inevitable. 109 Available at: < http://youtu.be/3ME6wQF77sU> 110 With a few exceptions, such as in the zoom in the final frame of Dolcerino (10/6) and at some points in Plano Primo (15/8).

99

With regard to the public space chosen for the performance, the use of

a bus stop as the “stage” opened up a horizon of possibilities of interaction

between the dance and the world around it.111 According to Kent De Spain, a

dancer interviewed by Kloppenberg, improvisation is a “two-way” street:

You sense that your attention is both selecting and forming your experience in real time, but that what is being selected and formed is not completely of your choosing, because the world is improvising too; and that dance, your interaction with the world, forms you just as you form the world (quoted in Kloppenberg 2010, 187).

Therefore, the choice of a location where other people were present

was a way to incorporate this indeterminate character of “improvisation of the

world.” Extra pedestrians, passengers, bodies and faces took part in the

creative process as unintentional elements, as events that were not under the

control of the creators, forging an atmosphere of surprise for the interpreters

who at times had to adapt to “foreign bodies”, sharing the space with the

urban context.

The influence of chance and unintentional events was thus added to

the interactive context of the video dance, generating even more opportunities

for dialogue between the arts. We must not forget that the relationships based

on the concepts of musical visualization and counterpoint persisted and

occurred not only between music and dance, but also between music, dance

and images.

With these considerations in mind, some decisions were taken during

the image editing phase and the music-mixing phase. A schematic guide had

been made beforehand with the intention to differentiate three basic moments

according to the structure of the music, which would serve as a guide for

editing the images.

The following is the schematic guide created together with

choreographer Eunice de Oliveira for the dance video Vagão:

111 It should be noted that URBS (Curitiba’s transportation authority) does not allow the use of electric power inside the tube; the sound heard by the dancers during the shooting of the music-video was therefore limited.

100

IMAGE 40 – SCHEMATIC GUIDE OF THE DANCE VIDEO VAGÃO

At first, block-units governed by counterpoint in D minor of the

percussion instruments of the first part of the composition were illustrated

(music visualizations) by images of the bus, doors opening and closing and

any other images of movements that made references to machines, including

images of the everyday lives of the dancers, such as, for example, the

spinning of the tube turnstile.

In a second, “more lyrical” moment, according to Oliveira, and

equivalent to the section of the music where the pianos perform the tremolos

and move out of phase, the choreographer suggested that we perform a

“poetic reverie,” when the dancers stop being a mere part of the everyday

scenario and start dancing.

101

The third and final moment of Vagão restates portions of the previous

sections. The context that was created distinguishes itself by the coexistence

of “poetic” sounds with “machine” sounds, with the addition of noise and

ambience – which causes the dissolution of the musical material. In this

context of tension between the various constitutive musical elements, the

“non-musical” sounds prevail over the other sounds of the piece.112 The

dancers responded to this sound counterpoint with more dynamic and diverse

movements, apart from exploring other parts of the tube. At the end of the

composition, rhythmic and noise versions of the initial motifs of the piece are

repeated, completing the meaning of the work.

Based on this guide, the choreographer created the following shooting

plan:

3 takes of each event: fixed camera; traveling (skate) and close-ups. Main takes: I) Image of the tube as seen from the newsstand; II) Crossing the street (diagonal) - dancer already inside the tube (Alessandra); III) Bus arrival and setting up the ramp - digital scan, turnstile, ticket collector; IV) At the stairs, 3 dancers - Reinaldo at the turnstile; V) Raphael, as soon as he can, arranges to arrive at the tube by bus; VI) Hesitation, Raphael, Alessandra and Reinaldo enter. Get in line and cross arms; VII) Trip to the bar; VIII) Free (piano) IX) On the ground, lower plane X) Corners of the windows with Raphael and Alessandra - “Agrárias” Reinaldo; XI) Running inside the tube/Reinaldo hanging (camera from below) XII) Exit, Alessandra gets on the bus, Raphael goes out the door e Reinaldo stands still. (obs.: wide-angle lens will have to move!)

In observing the shooting plan, we note that take VIII is the only take

when there is a free moment, a reference to an actual improvisation. While

during the sessions the purpose was to maintain improvised creation, during

shooting, however, the choreographic direction was to select movements

created and memorized during the studio improvisations and repeat them in

the video dance, such as, for instance, the lines, the crossing of arms and the

interaction with the bar.

112 “The transition from pitch to noise” (Stockhausen 1996, 89)

102

The choice to direct most of the body movements during the shoot

reflected in part the need for Oliveira to gain some control over the material

that would later be edited and processed into the final product.113 This choice,

however, brings up a question of aesthetic nature that is relevant to this work -

in this context, we must reflect on the extent of which to balance the freshness

of authentically spontaneous movements with a “carefully predetermined

[creation] of the craft” (Kloppenberg 2010, 188).

To better visualize the relationship between music and dance in this

work-research, we will point to some passages that are relevant to the

meaning of the composition as a whole, through images captured from the

video dance scenes. We therefore selected video dance images that

correspond to the three sections of the musical piece.

Section A of Plano Primo is heard through the marimba, after a brief

presentation of the urban surroundings of the bus tube. Thus, “the tube seen

from the outside” refers to the repetitive character of the music. The image

also introduces the “space” of the performance and contextualizes the “scene”

as the theme of the original marimba gradually develops.

IMAGE 41 – TUBE SEEN FROM OUTSIDE WITH BUS IN THE BACKGROUND

113 This decision, made by Oliveira, was the only moment throughout the entire research in which there was a disgreement between the composer and the choreographer.

103

IMAGE 42 – ALESSANDRA GOING THROUGH THE TURNSTILE

Next we highlight a relationship of equivalence between timbre and

image114: when Alessandra and Reinaldo arrive at the scene. Alessandra’s

arrival coincides with the execution of the theme an octave above by the

glockenspiel while Reinaldo’s arrival coincides with the restatement of the

theme in the fifth degree of tone, executed in the lower frequencies by the

kalimba.

The planes selected for this section also offer variety and contrast.

While the arrival of Alessandra was filmed from the outside in, Reinaldo’s

arrival is seen from the inside out. Indeed, the image of the male dancer

becomes framed by dark lines with the prevalence of squares and reflections

in the glass, adjacent to the collector, while the image of the female dancer is

surrounded by circles and luminosity inside the tube. An ambiguity of meaning

expands this auditory and visual experience: the camera focused on dancer

Alessandra generates a perception that she is inside the tube watching the

arrival of Reinaldo.

114 Analogy defended by musical visualization enthusiasts from the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Dalcroze, who associated the difference in timbre to the different genders, male and female.

104

IMAGE 43 – REINALDO GOING THROUGH THE TURNSTILE

The beginning of Plano Primo’s part B corresponds to the introduction

of actual choreographic movement. The music reflects this moment by fading

in the phasing of the pianos. Later, the images become more lyrical and

reflections on the walls of the tube modify the atmosphere of the piece,

creating a dialogic relationship with the music. Images relative to the

previously selected choreography then follow: lines and games, games with

arms and movement on the bar. These images are enhanced, for instance, by

a dynamic that is “added onto” by the bus (in “games with arms”) – noticeably

generating a sense of counterpoint or autonomy between dance and music –

and by the multiplicity of forms arising from the spatial structure of the tube,

many times framing and adding depth to the movements of the dancers

(“movement on the bar" and “games with arms”). In this context, these

structures – clangs – that gradually unfold between the scenes interfere in the

relationship between the movements of the dancers and the music.

105

IMAGE 44 – LINES AND GAMES

IMAGE 45 – GAMES WITH ARMS

106

IMAGE 46 - MOVEMENT ON THE BAR

The playful game between the dancers and their interactions with the

bar add a growing momentum to the music. This tension, this generated

climax corresponds to the development of the piano phasing. In this passage,

the imagistic planes close over the bodies of the dancers, adding drama and

expressiveness.

IMAGE 47 – MOVEMENT ON THE BAR II

107

IMAGE 48 - REINALDO PERFORMS A LIFT OF ALESSANDRA’S BODY

Although unrehearsed, the “running” inside the tube was planned for

the shoot. This movement reflected Oliveira’s desire to explore the space that,

despite being restrictive, enabled explosions of energy and transgression.

This counterpoint between the human body and the everyday reality of the

machine in the public space generated a parallel, appropriately, with the

section C of Plano Primo, at which point noise rhythmically stands out in

relation to elements of other sections of the piece.

IMAGE 49 – RUNNING

108

Ultimately, the work of improvisation in the studio was modified to meet

certain requirements that came with shooting inside the tube bus stop. The

integration concept proposed in this research proved to be comprehensive, in

that it embraces not only the perception of similarities and counterpoints at

different levels and constituent parts of the video, but also the concept of

chance, which interfered in the complexity generated by the different modes

of artistic interaction. Although not detailed, at this stage of the research

Tenney’s ideas about clang also played an important role in the discovery of

the structural elements of the work as a whole, facilitating thereby the

reflection and the study of this “piece”.

Finally, the concepts of improvisation and integration, specifically

investigated in this work, also raised a reflection on the role of video in artistic

documentation. By comparing the images of the video dance with the images

captured in the dance studio, we realized that the imagistic planes are more

“closed” in the first case. The cameraman often chose to focus on certain

parts of the body – face, arms, legs and feet of the dancers – to the detriment

of several situations generated during the games of interaction, and this mode

of operation brought consequences to the overall perception of the work.

Thus, the camera operator contributed to the final product and interfered with

the originally planned results, creating new relationships between the arts of

music and dance through video. This fact at first appeared to be

disappointing, but ultimately it allowed for a more elaborate reflection about

the collaborative nature of our creative process.

The same can be said about Eunice Oliveira’s option to prioritize the

scenes that were “rehearsed” and directed by her in the shooting of Vagão.

Even though it somewhat sacrificed the spontaneity of improvisation, it

eventually facilitated the choice of images during the editing phase.

Therefore, we conclude that integrated processes, in which more than

one creator collaborates and interferes in the final product, tend to be hybrid

processes in terms of choices and decision-making. As in a road filled with

bifurcations, choosing a path necessarily implies in the abandonment of

others. Does this not reflect the condition of the artist willing to change in

order to reinvent himself?

109

Conclusion

This research aimed to investigate the possibilities of integration

between the arts of music and dance through compositions that would

stimulate body movement. As the research progressed, various options to

integrate the arts were explored, such as using improvisation as an

investigation tool in the dance studio.

The concept of integration was initially based on a more traditional and

closed conception, with its origins in Lophukov, Dalcroze and the forerunners

of American Modern Dance, who believed in an equal relationship between

music and dance. Through an in-depth review of the literature, we found that

several choreographers, such as Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham,

sought to break this bond of equivalency through counterpoints between

movement and sound and yet still respect certain limits.

Stephanie Jordan, meanwhile, sees the term as a collaborative

process between everyone involved, as in the Ballet Russes. Behind the

interchange between music visualization and counterpoint, of dancing “in the

music” or “outside the music”, there is a search for autonomy and therefore

the need for dance to get rid of the essentially musical standards of classical

ballet.

In this sense, in the collective work of Merce Cunningham and John

Cage, dance no longer depends on or is tied to music – or the tempo of music

– and begins to “depend only on itself” (Cunningham in Obrist 2009, 22-23).

This radical autonomous relationship, in which choreographer and composer

interact through their work only on the day of the premiere, inaugurates a

dissonant relationship in which music and dance “integrate” in the eyes of the

spectator at the exact moment of the performance.

As a result, an immense field for the development of dance and music

opens up. In Cunningham’s conception, the very idea of spectacle is

challenged when the dancer abolishes the orientation of the audience as to

the front of the stage. The role of the audience in the show was thus

reinvented. Later, these new values would be developed and expanded by

110

choreographers who succeeded Cunningham, such as, for instance,

members of the Judson Dance Theater.

These ideas were relevant to this research, inasmuch as we sought to

explore different ways to approximate the arts in question, having as a basis

the fundamentals of improvisation, chance and repetition. Through the

improvisation of movement in combination with the improvisation of form and

block-units in the music, we began to find a way to work out a new

relationship of integration between music and dance. Some intuitive choices

proved to be adequate for certain associations, while others, in the studio,

were created by chance.

To execute the musical part of the research, we studied how to create

block-units, how to develop them through repetition and how to use the laws

of visual perception in the formation of units between the parts. The choice to

use the recording studio as a compositional tool proved to be a wise one. On

a parallel level, this musical research provided a path for the resumption of

more traditional relationships, such as a productive focus on music

visualization via choreographers like Mark Morris and Anne Teresa De

Keersmaeker.

Other discoveries were made. In the interaction between the dancers,

sometimes there seemed to have been a harmonious agreement between the

sound and certain movements used by the dancers. This interaction was

larger or smaller according to the more melodic and traditional nature of the

music as opposed to the noisier sounds. This conclusion was drawn from the

improvisation sessions.

Additional, more specific issues were raised with regard to the

interaction between sound and movement during the improvisation sessions:

how can music influence the movement of a dancer? How does this process

of translating the sounds in the body take place? Is there indeed any

relationship between sound and movement? For example, why did the original

Drone motif generate a spinning motion in the body of Alessandra? Why did

all the dancers head to the ground during the lower frequencies of Drone’s

theme A? And still, why is there more interaction between the dancers in

Plano Primo, a piece with more traditional musical notes and counterpoint

111

technique? And lastly, why did Reinaldo, on a single movement, perform a

lift115 of Alessandra’s body during the tremolos of Plano Primo?

Even though these issues weren’t actually explored in depth, our

research seems to indicate that there is something intrinsic that determines

these movement “choices”. Some reactions are collective and others

personal. However, the investigation of these ideas is beyond the scope of

this work, as a whole.

It should be noted that, since this is an experimental process, we

cannot assert in a definitive way that the music was solely responsible for the

nature of the movements performed by the dancers, not the least because

each dancer perceives music in a personal way and each dancer has a

repertoire of movements and possible “answers” to the music. It was therefore

very important to relate the movements according to when and how often they

occurred.

In general, the dancers’ first impulse is to perform musical visualization

movements, especially when the piece of music is still fresh and new to them.

And that actually justifies the lack of interaction between the dancers at first,

since a priori their bodies tend to seek relationships with the music and then,

secondly, to pursue relationships with other dancers and the space, once they

are already familiar with the music and thus start to seek relationships of

counterpoint in relation to the sound occurrences and with their fellow

dancers. Indeed, the repetition of movements as an “echo” or a complement,

as defined by Jordan, requires greater sophistication on the part of the

dancers, as well as familiarity with the music. In the end, certain forms of

integration require a more reflective and less impulsive answer from bodies in

relation to the music, the space and the other dancers.

It is important to emphasize that the integration of music and dance

through improvisation occurs in two directions: in the music-dance direction, in

which the musical elements drive body movement, and in the reverse

direction, dance-music, in which the body movements of the dancers serve as

a basis for the improvisations to the shape of the music by the composer.

115 In dance this term is used for any type of suspension in a pas-de-deux ou pas- de troix.

112

If in music the materials are more quantifiable and therefore easier to

record or notate, in view of its proximity to mathematics through the

perception of small rhythmic units, this makes it more apparent and becomes

part of the musician’s “baggage”. In dance, this baggage is essentially body-

spatial and, on a second level, related to time. A dancer’s relationship with

space, with the visual “weight” of his movements, for example, is more of a

experience, felt in the body, than rationally understood.

An innate characteristic of the art of dance is the fact that the performer

experiences the effects of the performance in his actual body. More than any

other artist, the dancer experiences in the body the effect of his creation on

the spot. The improvising musician shares this sensorimotor and aesthetic

experience, but the relationship that the dancer has with his own movements

is indeed “felt on the skin.” This can be demonstrated, for example, when the

dancers approach the floor during rehearsals, when they hear sounds in the

lower frequencies. This implies an equivalence between the “weight” of

movement and sound.

It is through improvisation, through the original gesture, through the

first sound, the initial trace, that we find the most authentic way to express

ourselves in art. Before the existence of composition strategy, before the

press and the recorder, there was the man and his body.

Finally, the use of video in the improvisation process made the

integration process more complex. At first, as a tool for documentation and

material analysis, and later as a final product and synthesis of this research,

the video dance created at the end of this research served as the integration

desired by us and enabled us to achieve a final product in which music and

dance indeed become integrated, becoming a “3rd thing”.

113

REFERENCES Bailey, D. 1992. Improvisation: Its nature and practice in music. United Kingdom: Da Capo Press. Brown, J. M.; Mindlin, N.; Woodford, C. 1998. The vision of Modern Dance: in the words of its creators. London: Dance books. Cage, J.1973. Silence. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press,. Cazno, Y. B. 2008. Música: entre o audível e o visível. São Paulo: Editora Funesp. Copland, A. 1974. Como ouvir (e entender) música. Rio de Janeiro: Artenova. Cox, C., and D. Warner. 2009. Audio culture: readings in modern music. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. Dottori, M. 2005. “De gêneros, de macacos, e do ensino da composição musical.” In Anais do 1º Simpósio Internacional de Cognição e Artes Musicais, edited by Dottori, M, B. Ilari, R.C. Souza. Curitiba: Editora do Departamento de Artes da Universidade Federal do Paraná. Elias, E. 2012. “A expressão gerada pelo movimento.” Fotografe melhor apresenta film maker: os segredos da exposição para filmar. São Paulo: Editora Europa, n. 4: 40-48. Eisenstein, S. 2002. O sentido do filme. Rio de Janeiro, Jorge Zahar Editor. Gil, J. 2002. Movimento total. São Paulo: Iluminuras. Ginger, S and A. Ginger. 1987. Gestalt – uma terapia do contato. São Paulo: Summus Editorial. Godinho, J. C. 2006 “O corpo na aprendizagem e na representação mental da musica.” In: Em busca da mente musical: ensaios sobre os processos cognitivos em música – da percepção à produção, edited by B. Ilari, 357. Curitiba: Editora UFPR, Curitiba. Greiner, C. 2008. O corpo: pistas para estudos interdisciplinares. São Paulo: Annablume. Griffiths, P. A música moderna: uma história concisa e ilustrada de Debussy a Boulez. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1998. Hegarty, P. 2007. Noise/music: a history. New York: The Continum International Publishing Group. Humphrey, Doris. 1987. The art of making dances. Princeton: Princeton Book.

114

Jordan, S. 2000. Moving music: dialogues with music in twentieth-century ballet. London: Dance Books. Jordan, S. 1984. “Ted Shawn's music visualizations.” Dance Chronicle, v. 7, n. 1. Kandinsky, W. 2006. Concerning the spiritual in art. London: Tate Publishing. Katz, H. 1998. “O coreógrafo como DJ.” In Lições de Dança, edited by Soter, S and R. Pereira, 11-12. Rio de Janeiro: Cidade Editora. Kaye, M. D. 1995. “Doris Humphrey at Green Mansions, 1947.” Dance Chronicle, v. 18, n. 3. Kloppenberg, A. 2010. “Improvisation in process: “post-control” choreography.” Dance Chronicle, v. 33, n. 2. Kostka, S. 1999. Materials and techniques of twentieth century music. New Jersey: Ed. Prentice Hall. Lepukhov, F. 2002. Writings on ballet and music. London: The University of Wisconsin Press. Langer, S. 1980. Sentimento e forma: uma teoria da arte desenvolvida a partir de filosofia em nova chave. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Martin, M. 2007. A linguagem cinematográfica. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Mendes, M. G. 1987. A dança. São Paulo: Ática. Miller, L. 2002. “E. Henry Cowell and Modern Dance: the genesis of elastic form.” American Music, v. 20, n.1. Moss, L. 1969. “Toward a new theater.” Perspectives of New Music, v. 8, n.1. Mumaw, B., and J. Sherman. 1981. “Ted Shawn, teacher and choreographer.” Dance Chronicle, v. 4, n. 2. Nestrovski, A., and I. Bogéa. 2000. “O Gesto Essencial.” Folha de São Paulo, Caderno mais. São Paulo, August 27: 6. Nettle, B. 1974. “Thoughts on improvisation: a comparative approach.” The Musical Quarterly, v. 60, n. 1. Noisette, P. 2011. Talk about contemporary dance. Paris: Editions Flammarion. Obrist, H. U. 2009. Entrevistas v.1. Rio de Janeiro: Editoras de Livros Cobogó.

115

Reich, S. 2002. Writings on music. New York: Oxford University Press. Rengel, L. 2006. “Fundamentos para análise do movimento expressive.” In Reflexões sobre Laban, o mestre do movimento, edited by M. Mommensohn, and P. Petrella, 121-130. São Paulo: Summus. Malnig, J, J. Eilber, D. Jowitt, G. Morris, B. Altshuler, and S. Friedman. 2005. “Clytemnestra and the dance dramas of Martha Graham: revising the classics.” Dance Chronicle, v. 28, n. 2. Mommensohn, M, and P. Petrella. 2006. Reflexões sobre Laban, O mestre do Movimento. São Paulo: Summus Editorial. Reason, M. 2006. Documentation, disappearance and the representation of live performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reynolds, N, and M. McCormick. 2003. No fixed points: dance in the twentieth century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Ross, A. 2007. The rest is noise: listening to the twentieth century. New York: Picador. Rosen, C. 1996. Arnold Schoenberg. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Sawyer, K. 2003. Group Creativity: music, theater, collaboration. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Sherman, J. 1997. “Ruth St. Denis: the lost ballet.” Dance Chronicle, v. 20, n. 1. Simms, B. R. 1996. Music of the twentieth century: style and structure. 2. ed. New York, NY: Schirmer Books. Sloboda, J. 2010. A mente musical: a psicologia cognitiva da música. Londrina: Editora da Universidade Estadual de Londrina. Steinberg, C. 1980. The dance anthology. New York: New American Library. Stockhausen, K. 1996. “Electroacoustic performance practice.” Perspectives of New Music, v. 34, n. 1. Teck, K. 2011. Making music for modern dance: collaboration in the formative years of a new American art. New York: Oxford University Press. Tenney, J. 2000. Meta-Hodos: a phenomenology of 20th century musical materials and an approach to the study of form. Lebanon: Frog Peak Music. Varèse, E., and C. Wen-Chung. 1966. “The liberation of sound.” Perspectives

116

of New Music, v. 5, n. 1. Vergine, L. 2007. Body art and performance. Milão: Skira Editore.

DOCUMENTS CONSULTED

Ferreira, A. B. H. 1969. Pequeno dicionário brasileiro da língua portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira S.A.. Fonseca, F. V. P. 1957. Dictionaire Français Portugais. Paris: Librairie Larousse. Polito, A. G. 2004. Michaelis: minidicionário italiano. São Paulo: Melhoramentos. Sadie, S. 1994. Dicionário Grove de música: edição concisa. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. Roget, P. M. 1953. Thesaurus of English words and phrases. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

DANCE PERFORMANCE PROGRAMS CONSULTED De Keersmaeker, A. T. 2010. En atendant. Viena. Program. Laurin G., and S. Reich. 2011. La vie qui bat. Montreal. Program.

SCORE

Reich, S. 1967. Piano phase. UE 16156 universal edition. 1 score (4 p.), Piano.

DVDS CONSULTED Cage Cunningham. 1991. Directed by Elliot Caplan. New York: Cunningham Dance Foundation. 1 DVD (95 min), color. Points in Space. 1986. Directed by Elliot Caplan; Merce Cunningham. London: BBC television. 1 DVD (55 min), color.

117

Trisha Brown: early years 1966-1979 volume 1. 2010. Directed by Trisha Brown. São Paulo: Magnus Opus. 1 DVD (93 min), color and B&W. Yo-Yo Ma Inspired by Bach: cello suites No. 3 & 4, Falling down stairs. 1998. Directed by Barbara Willis Sweete. Toronto: Rhombus Media; Sony Music. 1 DVD (111 min), color.

ONLINE VIDEOS CONSULTED

Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich. Directed by Thierry de Mey. Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXiHD4LmiE>. Accessed on 5/3/2010. Brian Eno talks about Moment Of Surrender. Unknown director. Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mYx0dt9iKE>. Accessed on 3/15/2012.

E-MAIL (PERSONAL COMMUNICATION)

R. Kuster. email message to author, March 27, 2012. A. Lange. Mais musicas. email message to author, July, 2011.

DOCUMENT CONSULTED ONLINE Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural Artes Visuais. Available at: <http://www.itaucultural.org.br/aplicexternas/enciclopedia_ic/index.cfm?fuseaction=termos_texto&cd_verbete=5370>. Accessed on 9/23/2011.

An Integrated Composition Process Between Music and Dance Based on Improvisation

Documents