"Combined presence" technical rehearsal

Yesterday my dance-music group had it´s 3 hour technical rehearsal at The Place (www.theplace.org.uk/). It went very well to say the least and we are all very excited for our premiere tomorrow. Before that tech-rehearsal we were abit on edge, since we felt we had not been able to rehearse enough, due to some administration difficulties and our performer´s hectic schedule. But it worked out because these are very talented people.

Composer: Helgi R. Ingvarsson
Choreographer: Andrew Bennett
Dancers: Toni Wooff, Monique Davidsson
Musicians: Caoimhe de Paor (Recorders), Chiel Busscher (electronics) &
Yolanda Bruno (violin).


Last week, under some pressure, Andrew Bennett, came up with the title: "Combined Presence" It works quite well since that´s the way we worked. Rather than him setting his dance to my music or vice versa we combined our creations, of course influencing each other and making a few compromises at crusial points in the structure for the piece to speak as a whole. The musicians are also very present and visible on the stage and there´s even a moment when a musician´s and dancer´s presence converge. So, overall a good title.

Here you can read more about the event itself:
http://www.theplace.org.uk/12442/whats-on/music-collaborations.html

Our instrumentation is 5 recorders for 1 player, violin and electronics and the music is based on 2 main elements: Live performance and pre-recorded playbacks. Both instruments are plugged into a laptop, controlled by the 3rd person. That 3rd person then manipulates their LIVE sound by adding various effects like reverb, delays, distortion and more.

Then we have the 4th person (in this case: me) who has a second laptop for triggering the pre-recorded playbacks/loops. So, it´s somewhat of a quartet.

Here are some photos from the process: