playing for CI
Music for Dance.Musical adventures with contact improvisation. by Barnaby OʼRorke Treeekle
Firstly there is the dance, or is it the space? If the need to dance is great enough people will dance anywhere. So firstly there is the need to dance. Music is not necessary somehow. I am invited to play sometimes and this essay is about my approach to playing for CI jams and classes. I dance too.
Anyway I am usually in the corner, or the side, occasionally in the middle, playing. I usually start with silence and let the dancers find their relationships, their rhythm, themselves, and this can go on and on until something occurs. I need to arrive to and find my spine growing out of the chair and the cello
resting on my knees, the bow in my hand, the strings under my fingers, are those my feet? no. My
eyes open and seeing........where am I? Oh yes. In a large room with people behaving strangely.
As the musician I have the advantage of seeing, playing to and engaging with the whole space. I can chose certain qualities that may or may not already be in the space and bring them up, in, over, all around. These qualities may have been decided earlier depending on the focus of the jam. I wait and watch.
Music´s usual job is to inspire, hold the space and focus in the room, and create a space to dance within.
I usually tell people that the dance always comes first but, writing about it, I can see that what comes first is the relationship. Initially led by the dance. As a dancer that is clear. It’s a partnership that moves easily between leading, supporting and following. To just be a supporter or follower is limited and dull.
I enjoy playing acoustically because the sound is human size, people can choose to get closer or further away. Its localised. I can move from silence and back into noise easily. Playing almost into silence, and infact being barely audible is a great and interesting tool; holding the space somehow, and being able to break back in at any point. The silence is part of the music.
Dancers are often afraid of musicians because of the power they, sometimes unknowingly, wield over the space. I wanted to write something down about this power and how I have come to use it. There are so many approaches
and so little seems to be articulated about it, especially amongst musicians.
Often times I work alone in a jam, its simpler perhaps, but also that’s the way it usually is. As musicians we make arcs in space with our decisions, the dancers too. The more arcs musically there are the less coherence there is to the space.
When I work with other musicians I could say, a little crossly(oops), “Donʼt play with me, play with the whole space! Donʼt close you eyes! By doing that you are missing a great part of what the dance has to offer.” The dancers close their eyes at their peril. A flying leg or forehead may appear at any moment. Musicians close there eyes and can spin into uncomfortable collisions without realising it. I have been told to shutup, which has to be fine somehow. But still a collision of sorts
The dance can change from moment to moment, usually things will change slowly as different energies will rise and fall. Sometimes after intense focusing it can all fall a part into a more relaxed, playful energy. To miss that change is like standing naked in a motorway, its not something you want to do too often.
Working with eyes open helps but I once worked with a blind musician and it was wonderful. Somehow another quality. The rules dissolve and are being re-written constantly, which ofcourse is the great adventure of jamming. A simple melodious line can hold the space gently, allowing focus and allowing the mind to rest somehow and go for the ride.
Once I start playing, once the need in me has pressed me into the cello I will follow a line or an idea. Maybe there is a general feeling of excitement in the space, maybe I will play that; maybe there is madness and I am playing order ;
maybe everyone is moving fast except a couple in the corner moving incredibly slowly and I will play that energy into the space against the fast dances. Its great when the dancers can allow the music to inform what they do but still have the freedom to follow their own lines. Like a partner.
Fantastically poetic things can happen in this space.
I have played in jams, Spanish ones, that are so volatile everyone is on the edge of breaking into full on party. Here the music could provide the calm and focus that was missing and I ended up playing very simple slow scales. It was a crazy contrast but somehow it worked by holding everyone back from the edge of freaking out. They freaked out later.
I follow what interests me. Desire. I learnt this approach with Lisa Nelson: to watch the rise and fall of desire, sometimes following it, sometimes just experiencing it pressing you into the space. I am not playing to make noise and fill the space. When my interest moves on, I let it go. I donʼt need to keep pounding the space because now everyone is howling like dogs or spinning like tops. Pumping the space with rhythm is hypnotic and usually creates more of a disco, which can be great and, at the wrong moment, disastrous. It’s a collective of individual wills making something. Sometimes it does not work visibly but the struggle is worthwhile. Also as a musician supporting the dance I have observed that if people are dancing already there is nothing to do, nothing to add. Dance happens without music: so much of it can be internal that any outside stimulus is void.
Then there is silence and listening again.
Silence can have a remarkable vast variety of qualities.
In the silence the dancers can enforce their own explorations, their internal conversation with the others and the space. In the silence their lingers what has gone before; a phrase from the music becomes physical, a rhythm of feet, the arc of some slowness. In the silence the future is born and if I am
watching and listening I can see these things and catch the next sentence. Perhaps play it or listen to it. Or have a tea.
Practically what this means is that I will play for a period, say maybe 10-20 minutes then I am silent, listening and watching for 10-20 minutes. Sometimes this doesn’ happen at all. It’s amorphous. I have found that this approach brings a certain performance quality to the jams. An intensity perhaps that is not always desirable. My interests and roots are in performance, that is to say: the transformation of qualities; the following of a story or development; the awareness of the whole picture. It’s great when that happens with group of people spontaneously. Falling together and coming apart.
Funny things happen, people laugh; quiet things happen, worlds disappear, suddenly everything is hopping mad. We move on.
I guess that’s one quality I really enjoy. Moving on when it’s over. Knowing when its over is usually simple enough. If I am getting heavy and bored its time.
I use melody and rhythm, some will be spontaneous, some developments of ideas and some just songs I have written. I am usually working with contrasts, with introducing new ideas, breaking things up and then disappearing again. With melody and rhythm this strategy of silence-sound -silence-sound has developed. If rhythm and melody are too persistent it’s not fun and controls the space. I know musicians that have a different approach only use abstract noises and loops. I like this and it has influenced and given me a wider palette of possibilities.
Rhythm is hypnotic so it needs to be handled with care. Changing ryhthm is a great tool also working with unobivious rhythm patterns like 7 and 5 can create a great swirling atmoshpere. Because they are outside the normal dance music patterns, 3 and 4, dancers are free to react differently and more organically. Rhythms like these are good for high energy moments and because the 1 is not in the regular place dancers have to move through the rhythm rather that on it.
All this seems obvious. And in writing it I can see that perhaps I am talking about the same skills that we use to dance. Listening, being with yourself, responding, following, leading, being in the dance. Perhaps its not obvious because its a practise not an essay.
I have had alot of positive feedback to the way I play for jams. Someone said they like dancing to something that is complete because the dance is incomplete. It has a home for a while. I have played at alot of festivals in the last three years which has given me great opportunity to develop and tune
this strategy. The most difficult and unsuccessful for me was playing for the Frieburg festival. How do you play for 300 people jamming? I think its an interesting puzzle and maybe this essay will contribute something to the answer.
Maybe an answer lies in setting intentions or qualities before a jam and then letting them go and seeing what happens. So many musicians work alone in a jams so providing space to play together, talk and generate ideas and material by themselves would be very useful .