Day 2- Rhythm, harmony and choreography

14.02.17 Tuesday

I started the session off with a group discussion. We outlined our challenges and what we wanted from the project. Then we finalised a short plan which required us to arrange Clapping Music and write/choreograph our own minimalist piece of music!

I began with the dancers by doing some warm ups. I used the heel-tap to warm up which you can see in the video.

We worked a bit more on our hand-movements and precision. I taught the dancers how to use their wrists as well.

In the meanwhile, the musicians had worked out 4 rhythms to layer over each other, by taking inspiration from Music for pieces of Wood.

In the afternoon, I let the dancers practice their kathak moves and worked with the musicians. The questions was what tonality to use. We brainstormed many ideas but agreed on using an Indian raga mode to contextualise the music with kathak. I wrote the raga bhairavee mode on a drawing board for the musicians. They decided to use this mode to compose a piece in minimalist style.

me writing on the mode on the drawing board.

We then experimented with various textures and sounds. What combinations of instruments could we use, what ranges would they play in? It was a great exercise in orchestration!

The day ended with a recap of what we had achieved- the musicians shared what they had done and the dancer did the same. The ideas we came up with on this day defined most of our porject's final performance.