Noisy Fixation: Reflection Blog

Noisy Fixation was inspired by the poem "Silence" by Bradley Hathaway; a spiritual poet and performance artist with a gentle yet effective voice.



Upon starting the composition process, Audrey and I discussed what we enjoyed in terms of music, poetry, and gestures. We both enjoy duets, trios, quartets and other small groupings of instruments as opposed to solos. It was important to us both to have a poem that was substantial and passionate but not cheesy or melodramatic. When we discussed what we liked and what we would like to see for this piece we found a poem then divided to search for the other materials. We both found music options, gestures from the poem, and general ideas for where we thought the piece should go.
We reconvened the next day to show what we had gathered and decide what to keep and what to scrap. I had brought a beautiful song Opus 35 No. 22 in B Minor composed by Fernando Sors even though it is a song for the solo guitar. This was not something either of us anticipated wanting, but we both felt that the emotions evoked by the song matched and complimented those evoked by Hathaway's poem. There is a sense of longing and nostalgia to the song set by the minor notes and chords  and the running strums. It struck me as sensual and something tragically and sometimes painfully beautiful. I feel that there could be very few songs that would have worked better for this piece than Sors Opus 35.

Creating movement for the piece was interesting because I have never approached a project in this way before. Audrey and I both came into the studio and discussed the words of the poem and  listened to the music. We then split and created short ten second phrases that we later showed to each other and discussed what we would do with them. I also had the idea of starting the dance skin to skin so using that idea, we started the dance with a few gestures from the phrase I had created. Upon creating the first minute of the dance we were given notes from Prof. Leanhardt that the spacial design of the dance was severely lacking. To fix this, we decided that every pathway we had thought about would need to be exaggerated and intentional. When I watched the video of our performance I felt that this problem was patched fairly well. Had we more time to practice, I would create more complex spacial patterns as we almost always stuck to diagonals.

Audrey had created a phrase that we decided to vary in speed between the two of us. I did one set of the movement in the time that she took to do three or four sets as she made a jagged angular shape around me. She finished by jabbing me in the side and I fall away and return to her as she leans back on my chest. This was to represent the relationship between us as one listens and the other laments. Sometimes we even hurt the people who listen to us and help us, but somehow they come back to support us anyways. This could be anyone, it does not have to mean God or Jesus or any other deity.

We decided to then locomote the phrase I had created and put it in a basic cannon. We traveled the first half to the upstage right corner and when we reached the resting position there, I became the on leading the cannon to the downstage left corner where we finally find complete rest.

Overall with the time restrictions and all the juxtaposition of the schedule with all of our classes, I feel like Audrey and I had about a majority success. The other students seemed to enjoy watching it, and many of them mentioned that they found a narrative quality to it even if the story they found was not one that I wanted them to see. The things I would change about our piece are: spacial design complexity, more abstraction of gestures, a high energy climax, and a longer stillness when i curl up on Audrey's back. I feel that these aspects of the dance greatly influence the relationship between Audrey and I. The most influential change would be the abstraction of gestures. I feel that this would get us away from the undesired romantic narrative quality.

In the Dance Composition text there is a very relevant section on Auditory Stimuli. In the section it talks about how the music can create a frame work for the dance. Like when a building is in the primary stages of progress and all that stands is the wood frame. It can dictate so many things if a composer should choose to submit to it. Style, length, mood, and phrasing are just a few examples of the structural qualities music brings to the piece. These four aspects were definitely present in the composition of Noisy Fixation. The style of the dance was smooth, the mood was nostalgic and hopeful, the phrasing was continuous with a sparse accents and moments of stillness and silence, and finally the length was perfection as it was a two minute section of Opus 35 with a clear resolution.

I was very glad to find the section on Visual Design. For some reason I could not find the proper words to describe what I was enjoying about certain pieces of work. I kept trying to say that the design aspect of the dance was really nice and people did not know what I meant. It made sense to me because many of my friends have graduated from the Communications Design program and for them "design" means the way something physically looks. They design an ad for Starbucks and what you see on the paper is a design like a picture or a pose. I was trying to tell people that I liked the pictures created by their dance the way it physically LOOKED without complete reference to the concept. This does not always mean that the piece was movement for the sake of movement or that it lacks concept, it just means that the separate aspect of the visual design was pleasing all on its own. This section of the Dance Composition text really helped me understand what it was that I was trying to explain.

I did not have an inspirational dance piece for this study, however I was inspired by the voice of Bradley Hathaway when he performs "Silence" live. I had the pleasure of seeing him perform in a very intimate theatre space. His voice dances. It rises and falls in tone and inflection as he feels what he is saying. It's like the words are coming not from his throat but from some place deep in his diaphragm or lower even. As the words emerge his face lights up with the energy that came up with the words and his focus is searching yet intentional. He is so powerful and yet so gentle. It was important for me to show these qualities in this piece.