I submited a research proposal to the Freiburg Contact Festival 2019. It’s an idea which I’m also developing with others into a dance for a duet with two cellos. But the Freiburg proposal uses an instrument more at hand – our clapping hands. This is the proposal.
Research Proposal: in-between
The hall is filled with a cacophony of sound – like the sound of rain falling all around, as we –dancers and musicians – participate in this research. Our musical instrument is our hands, the movement of them, clapping or silent; and as dancers – our whole body, moving or at rest.
Our research will investigate the in-between. When dancing in a jam with an accompanying musician, we have a space between us and the music – one which is elastic and malleable: in-between movement and music.
Our feet upon the ground may be percussive; the sound of weight shifting is sensed when our ear and our bones are pressed to the floor; our breath is never still; and a movement in the air is as movement at an instrument.
This is a simple score for a group consisting of two dancers and two musicians – a quartet. The instrument played by the musicians is their hands, clapping. A room full of people is many quartets, and with a crowd then a cacophony of the sound: ordered and disordered.
We will change the diversity and abundance of music and dance to experience a different space-between. We are both musician and dancer and in this lab, we examine the fragility of the space-between. Do we dance to the music or to the musician, to our dance partner(s) or somewhere between? This is the space-between: fluid; corporeal and composed.
Score
Two dancers – dancer 1 & dancer 2 ; two musicians. What are the possibilities in leading and following the music where we change the relations of one to another. We will change our roles between musicians – clapping, and dancers – moving. Each quartet decides this score aspect.
- Dancer 1 follows musician 1; dancer 2 follows musician 2
- Musician 1 follows dancer 1; musician 2 follows dancer 2
- Musician 1 follows musician 2; dancer 1 follows dancer 2
- Dancers follow musicians
- Musicians follow dancers
- Musicians and dancers, all together
About the Facilitator
Andrew Wood co-founded Oxford Contact Dance (United Kingdom) where he has taught and facilitated since 2014. He’s been artistic director and a dancer in public performances. This is his dance diary: www.andrewdance.org
Featured image: Sud Web Clap clap, May 2011. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)