Intertwining: body, sound, word, improvisation.

Pauline Manley & Waldo Garrido

Friday 30 April, 2010, from 10 to 12am

Bon Marche Studio (UTS Bldg. 3, Lvl. 1, Rm. 105)

Performance: 20mins

Intertwining: body, sound, word, improvisation

How can two very different performers find each other through the practice of attunement? How does the landscape of each improvisation develop? What are the skills of improvisation? How can they be practiced, articulated and taught?

Intertwining will consist of a 10-15 minute improvisation by a dancer and a bass player. Following will be 10-15 minutes of poetic ramblings: immediate and uncensored responses by performers and audience. These ramblings make every statement important, every utterance potent, feeding back into the improvised practice, generating understanding.

As documentation and artefact, we will then create a multi-media document. The visual recording of the performance will be over-laid with the poetic ramblings; dance, music and poetics pasted over each other, inter-twined in time, to create a connection between performing bodies and the spoken word.

At Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, a dancer and a musician begin a series of improvisations. Both state their intention to ‘listen’ to what the other is doing, so that, moment by moment, there exists an inter-corporeal loop that feeds back and forth between their bodies. The intensity, direction and efficacy of this loop is ‘up for grabs’. Sometimes the musician’s rhythms dominate the dancerly choices. But then the dancer does something that shoots through to fingers on string, and this energy has an imperative power that alters soundscape. Back and forth the ‘lead’ changes, sometimes shared, sometimes dangling in between, sometimes powerfully directing: as when the dancer is flung about by violent slaps on the bass strings, hurled by sound into movement that must be done.

In this performance, the bass player will utilize musical motives from a number of styles. The dancer will employ a phenomenological reduction: trying only to listen, respond and generate, staying attuned, creating a Body Without Organs . Together, these performers will also reveal the cross-cultural nature of their research: South American musician meets post-modern dancer.

Waldo is a Bassist, producer and composer. Waldo has an international publishing contract with Albert/Universal Music. Currently, Waldo is undertaking a PhD degree at Macquarie University where he also lectures.

Dr. Pauline Manley has extensive performance and improvisation experience. She has a PhD in dance phenomenology and is head of Dance Studies at Macquarie University.