morning musings: new work for in bloom

image description: a dancer wearing navy cropped pants and a forest green shirt is in a white-walled studio sitting on her left thigh, with her hair, black with blonde tips, completely obscuring her face. Her left hand is pulling a bunch of strands of hair straight out in front of her. Her right knee is bent with her foot on the ground, making her knees form a “v” at a 45-degree angle. Her right arm is extended straight between her legs and her fingers are naturally curved.

I’ve been loosely working on a thing for In Bloom, a work-in-progress showing/gathering I’m performing in next week at The Center for Ballet Arts at NYU. My organization, Isogram Projects, is also co-producing with Sarah McCaffery/Gold Standard Arts Foundation. (I designed the flyer too!).

Until yesterday, I had been primarily brainstorming. Since the thing is just over a week away, I told myself I that I ABSOLUTELY had to make the entire thing on Monday (yesterday) so that I’d have time to rehearse it and make (hopefully) minor edits.

I thought I’d never make work about motherhood. The idea used to make me cringe, frankly. But now I’m feeling it. The thing I’m showing next week are sketches for a performance portrait of motherhood, ambition, and rage. So far, there is music (looped vocals and Push 3, featuring a drum rack I made with my piano) and dance. If I can get it together there may also be some kinetic drawing. We’ll see!

This is going to be an installment of my Test Sites series, short experiments in process that started in 2016. They aren’t meant to be precious, but I’ve felt so precious about them lately. I’ve made seven so far, and I’ve usually been happy with all of them, except for the most recent one.

I used to work with tight timelines frequently and have something finished by the end, I’m talking one or two weeks, and I’m finding that so hard to do these days. I used to be very confident about simply “fulfilling the task” and now my tasks tend to sprout other tasks and so on, so the thing keeps expanding, but I need to contain it and tell it to just wait till after the 28t so that I have something to show next week!

I made Test Site 7 four months after giving birth. It was rough. It’s the only one I haven’t posted on the Test Sites page. And frankly, this new one, Test Site 8, sort of feels like that again; I feel a familiar pressure. But I feel better about this one.

Tickets for the performance are here, and they’re free for artists and art workers. Get them soon! I imagine an event with free food will sell out fast.

bts: reimagining carnival of the animals

In March, Sozo Artists brought me in to compose a piece for violin, cello, two pianos, and electronics for a collaboration with poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, choreographer Francesca Harper, and dancer Wendy Whelan. It’s a reimagining of Saint-Säens’ Carnival of the Animals and it is an intentional response to the January 6 insurrection.

While I was making this, I needed to keep several things in mind: how to have my own voice pierce through a widely-known classical work; how to make something simultaneously original and familiar; supporting the text and choreography; making something for musicians I don't know and am not going to meet in person; writing an electronics part that works without click.

Left to right: Pauline Kim Harris, Walter Aparicio, Thea Mesirow

Marc would make audio recordings in addition to the text doc, and I’d listen to it over and over again. And again. Due to the project involving spoken word, where timing may not be rigidly measured, I allowed for space and flexibility in my score. There are also a couple of movements where the musicians are specifically directed to follow Marc’s verbal text rather than a set tempo, and I indicate this with performance notes and arrows pointing to words. In one movement, the ensemble doesn’t even need to stay together, but rather chase the text. I also really do not like click track, and again, I gathered this wasn’t going to be rigid or metronomic, so each cue is signaled by Piano 1, and I indicated this with a cute little hand symbol.

Vicky Chow and Walter Aparicio

I workshopped with violinist Pauline Kim Harris, cellist Thea Mesirow, and pianists Walter Aparicio and Vicky Chow. I’m so fortunate to be able to hear my music with live musicians rather than rely on shrieky midi, and to be in a process with colleagues I trust and feel comfortable with. There will be a preview performance on August 18 presented by La Jolla Music Society. (And I will finish the last movement this week!)  :-D