Choreography, Performance, Costume:
Sara Baird
Video Artist: Lee Whittier, courtesy of the Paul Sharpe Gallery
Sound Artist/Composer: Miriama Young
“The gardens were deep in the mist, through which the butterfly
clouds were swirling, one mist intersecting another,” - Salman
Rushdie
Titlipur is a real time interactive piece for dance, utilizing custom-made
hardware. The choreography is drawn from the Butoh tradition and explores
the human habitation of a bird-like form through movement. For the interactive
sound component, Sara manipulates in real time birdsong samples of a
bird endemic to the islands of New Zealand, the Tui. In terms of the
technology, custom-made hardware features a pair of accelerometers attached
to the dancer’s hands, so that as she moves, a signal is sent
in real-time via basic stamp to a Max MSP patch.
The sounds themselves, as they are derived from bird song, have a vocal-like
quality, which Sara exploits in her theatrical interplay between sonic
performance and choreographic improvisation – as if the bird-like
creature were speaking or “voiced” through her body. In
this way, the dancer transforms the birdsong using her body, and the
role of dancer, choreographer and composer elide in performance, creating
a palpable tension that challenges our traditional notions of the relationship
between the body and music in works for dance. She plays her body to
make song, but also dances to the sounds she makes with her body. Additionally,
I composed an electronic soundscape that provides the background accompaniment
to Sara’s structured interactive improvisation.
This piece featured in Anemone Dance Theater’s show series at
the Puffin Room in New York City, and as an installation at Gallery
138 in Chelsea, NYC.