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dana and shinichi [ and new iova-koga ] on kalx
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Reasons to see Line Between
1. To see 4 grown people in pajamas
2. To see Peiling dance so hard, so hard
3. To see what Dohee is dreaming about
p.s. turn up the volume on this video:
Line Advertise-Line Between-H.264
Guitar Hero
Suki and I were chatting about the potential hellishness of playing the same theater show over and over again. Both of us have experience playing in pit bands of shows that run dozens of times, getting caught in the vortex of repeating the same music night after night.
Perhaps this is more relationship advice than compositional wisdom, but one of the tricks I’ve used over the years to keep a multi-show dance/theater performance interesting for myself and the audience is to compose mostly for instruments I don’t know how to “play.”
When I played in the Mime Troupe band (the same show over 80 times) I played Javanese gamelan, Nepalese oboe, Peruvian flute and lots of other instruments I had no idea what to do with – but hardly any clarinet. In the case of Line Between, Suki and I are “playing” lots of guitar. Ok, so neither of us know how to “play” guitar — but that doesn’t mean we’re imposing our lousy guitar chops upon a suffering audience (there more than enough opportunities to hear that sort of thing). Hopefully what is achieved here is that we are approaching the instrument with our own novel outlook.
At the outset of the project I never would have imagined playing guitar as part of the piece, but somehow it just worked itself in as the right sound. On the other hand, bass clarinet – which is an instrument I actually have some competence on – didn’t make the cut.
Each time I pick up the guitar, unexpected things happen and it’s a challenge to make “musical” sounds on it rather than just noise. In some respects it’s a mess, but there’s also something compelling (I hope) about the resulting spontaneity. The consistent novelty and challenge keeps my head in the game, rather than just going through the motions of playing the part every night.
As a personal experience, it makes every practice and performance an adventure and presents a strong defense against the same-same-sameness of playing the same pretty melody line on the clarinet every night…
Scaffold
Image
getting there
inkBoat’s rehearsal week at the Headlands is drawing to a close. The back and forth has become a process ritual: deciding which bridge to approach from, and whether to circle in from the south or take the north tunnel. The tunnel is about as about as obvious a line between as you might envision, a line you can, well, you know, drive a car through.
FM signals still disappear altogether in the tunnel, something I love to listen to as a palate cleanser before sitting down to the audio rig in the gymnasium.
This version has a sonic overlay: all the sounds we’ve been recombining, pulling some to the front, pushing others back so far they leave the show entirely. I’m making small pieces from those sounds, so as not to forget them.
[ If you instinctively invoked a birth metaphor, you're still on the right track. Stay tuned for news. ]
Brrrrrrr!!! Settling in at the Headlands Center for the Arts
Gallery
This gallery contains 11 photos.
a welcome intervention
Last weekend we had the good fortune of getting to work with Ralph Lemon during our rehearsal process for Line Between. Shinichi has been one of three mentees working with Ralph episodically since July through Margaret Jenkins’ CHIME Across Borders project. The final week-long CHIME session happened November 14-19, and Ralph agreed to come out from New York a few days early to “intervene” upon our creation process. The concept of intervention is one that Ralph introduced to participants during the last CHIME session that took place in August. (His response and borrowing from Susan Rethorst’s more elaborate “Wrecking” process.) Though the term implies a kind of intrusion or perhaps violation, as we experienced it during CHIME, it’s actually a very productive and additive process, wherein an outside director comes in and messes with another director’s piece in any way he or she desires. It could mean editing, re-arranging, or developing sections of the work. Theoretically, I suppose the intervention could mean totally changing the direction a work is headed, though in our experience it’s been more about crystalizing and illuminating the intent of the piece.
Ralph watched a run through of Line Between on Friday night, took lots of notes, and slept on it. On Saturday, he began by sharing his notes with all of us. The notes were a blend of over-arching strengths and weaknesses of the piece and specific moments or choices that worked or didn’t work for him. Hearing his impressions came at a perfect moment for me. I have been saturated enough now in the world that we’re making that I’ve lost perspective. Though there are sections of Line Between that had been leaving me feeling unsatisfied or confused, I had gotten to a place of not being able to understand why I wasn’t satisfied. Ralph’s audience presence helped immeasurably to re-set my own perception of the piece.
After his notes, Ralph’s suggestion was to run the piece again, without any major structural changes, in order to allow his comments to percolate while watching the material. He claimed that his many of his notes were bringing to light what the dancing bodies already wanted to do, that he was commenting upon what he saw wanted to happen, and that I would recognize the moments that were almost something and wanting to become more. Watching this second run through and keeping our feelers out for these pregnant moments was hugely productive for us, and I hope will ultimately help to create a rhythm within the work that is essential for the audience to follow us into the strange world we are giving to them.
After the second run, Ralph made some specific proposals for a few sections that weren’t working so well. In one case he basically “mashed up” two distinct scenes that had been feeling very awkward into one collage and the result is very weird, in just the right way.
The premiere of Line Between is two weeks away, which feels to me like nothing. But Ralph assured us that we have plenty of time to play and continue to try new things. He urged us not to worry too much about perfecting and fixing things, but rather to keep the creative process alive until we absolutely run out of time.
I have only just recently met Ralph, seen his work, and been given the great opportunity of getting to work with him. Each time I come into contact with either him or the material he makes, I come away opened, reminded of the infinite possibility contained within a life of creative pursuit, and emboldened to dive deeper in.
It’s the best kind of intervention ever.
35 of your fans like pj harvey and sigur ros
Aside
On inkBoat’s facebook page I noticed that a recommendation on the right hand side to like the PJ Harvey and Sigur Ros pages, since inkBoat fans like them.
InkBoat has the best fans, I thought to myself.
Listen to linebetween radio to hear our favorites from these artists (I’m into second albums usually: Ágætis byrjun and Rid of Me), and don’t be surprised if you hear those influences in the soundscapes of the show. The atmosphere we’re creating can be easily read as Your Subconscious Iceland, and the gestures so small, so intimate, that you lean forward straining to hear the whisper.
And then your hair blows back.
tango jiu-jitsu
Dana was very kind, but wasn’t exactly convinced this source material could find its way into the Line Between:
After weeks (months?) of adaptation, Shin and Dohee showed a version tonight that perfectly blended the shocking hilarity of the youtube clip with the movement and conceptual vocabulary of the piece.
It’s a fact that on the way to developing the thing audiences eventually see, there are thousands of perfect things you would want them to see as well. Not possible, but I realize now everything we’ll end up showing is steeped in the attempt: gestures and sounds imbued with every other gesture and sound attempted along the way. Jiu Jitsu is a special case. It represents a training regimen Shin follows. It is a contrasting influence to the movement vocabulary of tango inside Line Between, or perhaps a sympathetic one. It’s provided a load of audio cannon fodder, allowing us to create music by manipulating discrete fragments from the soundtracks, converting speech to bell tones, sampling the silence of the film transfer (literally capturing the space between the sounds) and using it to become addicted to big swingin trickery.
The word Jujutsu can be broken down into two parts. “Ju” is a concept. The idea behind this meaning of Ju is “to be gentle”, “to give way”, “to yield”, “to blend”, “to move out of harm’s way”. “Jutsu” is the principle or “the action” part of Ju-Jutsu. In Japanese this word means science or art.
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You’ll see it in the show.
