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Stridulate : Hybrid Forms In Voice And Movement
June 12-13 & 19-20, 2009 Erica performs with the Synapse Arts Collective! Synapse is pleased to announce the performance dates and location for its upcoming evening length work, Stridulate: Hybrid Forms In Voice and Movement. Created by collaborators Rachel Damon and Dan Mohr, the performance explores compositional intersections of the voice and the moving body, of improvised and prescribed material, and of disciplined abstraction and primal expression. |
stridulate: v. (intrans.) to make a sound by rubbing parts of the body together (as crickets do).
Mohr and Damon began their collaboration in July of 2008, intent on creating a performance outside the trappings of either of their primary disciplines (music and dance, respectively). In developing the piece, Mohr was interested in creating musical performances which are not strictly performances of music—ones in which elements of movement are as hardwired into the score as are patterns of sound. Damon sought to unlock a vocabulary of vocal production both as a partner to and a motivation for movement. The culminating performance—featuring collaborators/ensemble members Lily Emerson, Jeff Harms and Erica Mott along with Damon and Mohr—is an exercise in formalism, integrating choreographed movement sequences, semi-improvised voice/movement duets, ensemble singing, and unconventional audience placement. Rather than impose any sort of narrative content, Damon and Mohr have structured the piece to allow the highly expressive and entirely non-verbal vocalizations of ensemble members to interplay with the movement of their bodies, allowing fleeting, task-oriented relationships to come to the fore, and then give way to others. Beginning by regarding the friction of the vocal folds as the primary mode of human stridulation, Stridulate aims to highlight points at which vocalization becomes movement and speech begets gesture, and amplify them to a point where they articulate an entirely new performance vocabulary.
Stridulate was created with generous support from the 2008 Crosscut Program, a partnership of Experimental Sound Studio and Links Hall. This project is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Website: www.synapsearts.com
(click on pictures above for larger image)