We performed on Friday at a benefit for SARSVL at the CoHearentVision social club in Leeds. Spent a fun few hours improvising together at Yorkshire Dance in the afternoon to warm up; we got the big room, studio 3, and got some really good work done, possibly inspired by the beautiful spring sunshine streaming through the windows. We've been having an ongoing debate about the wisdom of rehearsing the day of a performance. I think it's a function of the different approaches the musicians and the dancers take to performing and improvising. Both Ollie and I, the musicians, would normally do our best not to rehearse on the day of a performance, both in an attempt to let anything we learn from practising filter down into our subconcoius, and in the hope that we will come to the performance with fresh ideas, and not get stuck in routines we know have worked before. The dancers, by contrast, like to warm up for hours before a performance (I think mostly in the hope of avoiding injury), and prefer to get into an improvising state of mind before a performance. I have no idea if there's a right or a wrong inside this debate, but it's interesting to think about. One of the most interesting things I've learnt from this project is observing diefferent practise between the artforms. Watching others' work habits reflects my own to me.
The performance itself went really well. We were all very happy with the cohesiveness of the piece, and felt that we had carried the audience along with us. Personally, I find doing a mathilde performance in this kind of a situation much more challenging than when we perform to a dance audience. I always struggle with the idea of performing, as opposed to being- I feel really uncomfortable with being the thing observed, rather than making the thing (music/sound) that the audience is experiencing. This is doubled when I'm made self conscoius by the knowledge that probably a portion of the audience will have a prejudice against dance performance as "pretentious" or self indulgent. Ah, Britain! I guess the answer is to take that knowledge and use it to inform the performance; if it has an integrity and drive, it will be neither (even if a British audience might still perceive it as such). Despite all these (self imposed) reservations, I played my part I think, and the group as a whole felt really positive about the outcome. We had someone filming the event, so we'll put some footage of it up soon - you can judge for yourself.
Thanks to the organisers of the event, who are doing vital work (which ought to be a statutory service), and to anyone reading this who was there. And thanks for all the cake!
Seth
The performance itself went really well. We were all very happy with the cohesiveness of the piece, and felt that we had carried the audience along with us. Personally, I find doing a mathilde performance in this kind of a situation much more challenging than when we perform to a dance audience. I always struggle with the idea of performing, as opposed to being- I feel really uncomfortable with being the thing observed, rather than making the thing (music/sound) that the audience is experiencing. This is doubled when I'm made self conscoius by the knowledge that probably a portion of the audience will have a prejudice against dance performance as "pretentious" or self indulgent. Ah, Britain! I guess the answer is to take that knowledge and use it to inform the performance; if it has an integrity and drive, it will be neither (even if a British audience might still perceive it as such). Despite all these (self imposed) reservations, I played my part I think, and the group as a whole felt really positive about the outcome. We had someone filming the event, so we'll put some footage of it up soon - you can judge for yourself.
Thanks to the organisers of the event, who are doing vital work (which ought to be a statutory service), and to anyone reading this who was there. And thanks for all the cake!
Seth