Sunday, September 1, 2013

Excerpted dance and music (from TopShake's 'Jamb')

I've been fortunate to have been working with dancer and choreographer Jim McGinn and his TopShake Dance Company for the past three years, composing for each season's feature piece as well as improvising and performing live for some shorter works here and there.  It's been exciting meeting with him and creating a sort of 'jargon' through which we both might understand each other's unorthodox ways for creating in our respective  fields.  This is the first time that I've subordinated my choices to a set of criteria outside of sound.  Because of how much I like Jim's conceptual framework and way of articulating his creative process, the right amount of 'trust' is in place for me to go along with his decisions and not feel 'attached' to my music.  So far, we've performed Gust and Jamb and are currently working on Float, to open this November at Conduit Dance Studios here in Portland.  This is a compressed look at Jamb (inspired by Jim's experiences working in the oppressive spaces of a molybdenum mine in Colorado during a summer), performed last May.....

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