Illuminate Women's Music
  • Home
  • About
    • Illuminate
  • What's On!
    • Support Illuminate Women's Music
    • Digital series - What's On
    • 2020 Season I What's On
  • Illuminate 2020 artists
    • 2020 Season I Artists
    • Digital artists
  • Illuminate Blog
  • Past Illuminate Women's Music series
    • Illuminate at RCM 2020
    • Illuminate Extra at Nottingham!
    • Illuminate 2019 Season II concert series >
      • Illuminate at RCM 2019
      • 2019 Season II Artists
      • 2019 Season II What's Was On!
      • Season II Composer interview videos
    • Illuminate 2019 Season I Concert series >
      • 2019 Season I What's Was On!
      • 2019 Season I Artists
      • Gallery of 2019 Season I concerts
      • Season I 2019 Video gallery
    • 2018 Illuminate touring concert series >
      • Performers (2018)
      • Composers (2018)
      • Gallery of Illuminate 2018 concert series
      • Videos from Illuminate 2018 concert series
      • 2018 - What Was On!
  • Contact
  • Digital concert on 20th November
Picture

A blog series on women composers from the past and present

Picture

Somatic Movement and Memory in Composition

3/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
 
I use memories as the catalyst for my work, primarily memories of dance projects that I have previously composed which I intersect and layer with other processes of hidden ideas and personal meaning. Elements associated with dance such as gesture, specialisation and embodiment play into my concert works, but I am especially interested in exploring Somatics in composition and the memory: the body as perceived from within, and the somatic principles of mind-body connection. Somatic movement is used in dance, and through my practice-based research I am endeavouring to link this ‘dance’ concept as a holistic approach to writing music, linking embodiment and intuition, and gesture and memory together.

Etching Circles, my piece commissioned by Illuminate Season I 2019, was composed after I created electronic music for dance piece Circle of Perpetual Choirs. For this dance, the audience was in the round, and dancers moved outside the audience. Speakers were placed around the audience and under the seats, and I mapped a live, aural landscape around and close by the audience and dancers. Afterward, I was interested in the spatialization and in the different energy of the dancers, and wanted to focus on these thoughts for Etching Circles. 
Picture
Still taken from Circle of Perpetual Choirs video performance @ Siobhan Dance Studios London (16/11/18)
Originally, Etching Circles started out as four small movements. My mind turned to the earlier dance music, the idea of the Baroque Dance Suite, alongside the fact that four dancers within CoPC each had their own energy, and I decided to pair the memory of each dancer with a particular Baroque movement I felt had a similar quality in their expression; the Allemande, the Courante, the Sarabande and the Gigue. I started sketching and layering ideas from this which germinated gestures and sound worlds for each particular movement.

However, I didn’t want the piece to be structured with four separate movements, and as in the original dance, which interwove the choreography around the audience, I thought to weave and circle the movements together. From this idea, and the fact that somatic movement has a level of indeterminacy, I
’ve composed the movements as a mobile and invite the performers to play in their preferred order. Furthermore, each performer may play one stanza from a particular movement whilst another is playing from another movement. Repetition is encouraged. I imagined the sense that Etchings Circles becomes a sonic etch of the dancers. I like the image of etching as it a corrosion of the original project and something which can be etched in my memory. A final image that helped shape this piece is a photo of dance with long exposure. By now, my ideas for different movements could be placed within the same time and place in co- existence.

Finally, I’m sharing a recording of a piece I wrote which also uses memory as impetus. You are Your Memory was written for Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, and came from working dancers at Centre National de la Danse Paris (during workshops for In Vivo Danse). We talked about an idea that we face our past with our backs turned to the future. I meditated on this idea and later composed this:
You can hear Etching Circles performed throughout 2019 by Boston-based piano trio Prism, alongside  new works by Kerensa Briggs, Laura Shipsey, Angela Elizabeth Slater, Blair Boyd, and historical works by Morfydd Owen, Grazyna Bacewicz and and Lili Boulanger.

Circle of Perpetual Choirs: initiated by dancer Tara Silverthorn and developed with the kind support of Arnolfini Bristol, Ballet National de Marseille France, Siobhan Davies Dance London and Dream Time residency - a creative initiative between Dance Base, Studio On The Green and LIVE Borders. Funded by Arts Council England and Creative Scotland.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Authors


    Dr Helen Thomas
    Dr Rhian Davies
    ​Dr Laura Dallman
    ​Alex Burns
    ​Dr Gemma McGregor
    ​Sarah Westwood
    Carol J Jones
    Dr Blair Boyd
    Dr Angela Elizabeth Slater
    Laura Shipsey
    Kerensa Briggs
    Dr Kendra Leonard
    Elizabeth de Brito

    Dr Steph Power
    Composers
    Morfydd Owen
    Libby Larsen
    Lili Boulanger
    Louise Marie Simon
    Amy Beach
    Sarah Westwood
    Carol J Jones
    Arlene Sierra
    Gemma McGregor
    Angela Elizabeth Slater
    ​Clara 
    Schumann
    ​
    Hélène de Montgeroult
    ​Blair Boyd
    ​Fumiko Miyachi
    Grażyna Bacewicz
    ​
    Hilda Jerea
    ​
    Jennifer Higdon
    ​Thea Musgrave
    ​Elizabeth Maconchy
    ​
    Laura Shipsey
    Kerensa Briggs
    Caroline Bordignon
    ​Vivian Fine
    Barbara Strozzi
    Joanna Ward
    Yfat Soul Zisso
    Angela Elizabeth Slater (vid)
    Blair Boyd (vid)
    Sarah Westwood (vid)
    ​Kaija Saariaho
    Ailsa Dixon
    ​
    Charlotte Bray
    ​Angela Elizabeth Slater - blog on Suncatcher
    ​Steph Power
    Lara Poe
    ​
    Nina Danon

    Archives

    November 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
    • Illuminate
  • What's On!
    • Support Illuminate Women's Music
    • Digital series - What's On
    • 2020 Season I What's On
  • Illuminate 2020 artists
    • 2020 Season I Artists
    • Digital artists
  • Illuminate Blog
  • Past Illuminate Women's Music series
    • Illuminate at RCM 2020
    • Illuminate Extra at Nottingham!
    • Illuminate 2019 Season II concert series >
      • Illuminate at RCM 2019
      • 2019 Season II Artists
      • 2019 Season II What's Was On!
      • Season II Composer interview videos
    • Illuminate 2019 Season I Concert series >
      • 2019 Season I What's Was On!
      • 2019 Season I Artists
      • Gallery of 2019 Season I concerts
      • Season I 2019 Video gallery
    • 2018 Illuminate touring concert series >
      • Performers (2018)
      • Composers (2018)
      • Gallery of Illuminate 2018 concert series
      • Videos from Illuminate 2018 concert series
      • 2018 - What Was On!
  • Contact
  • Digital concert on 20th November