Gaming, Interactivity, and Contemporary Dance John Toenjes   Aesthetic Bias about the Music and Dance Relationship Since the early years of modern dance in America, composers and choreographers have been debating about the most preferred, most aesthetically valid relationship between music and dance. Some composers have said that the music should be closely tied together with the choreography. Others have …

Reflections on A Study on Effort1 Keir GoGwilt and Bobbi Jene Smith   Introduction (Keir) “What does effort look like for you, on the violin?”—This was the first question that Bobbi asked me as we began working towards our duet version of A Study on Effort (hereafter referred to as ASOE), first premiered in June 2016. Given the customarily invisible role …

The Cello as a Corporeal Performative Instrument Ulrike Brand   Introduction In the performative context described here, three acting figures appear: a rolling cello, a performing cellist, and dancers interacting with her. Their manifold interactions, their different kinds of confusion and disguise provide the opportunity to reflect, at least to a certain extent, on some questions that exceed the original …

Simon Rose and Ingo Reulecke   IR: As a dancer, I’ve been involved with this sort of practice for about twenty years—working in sessions with musicians in what I describe as real-time composition. I like to make this reference to the Echtzeitmusik (real-time1 music) scene in Berlin.2 I’m curious as to how we make sense out of what we are …

Gestural Interactions in the Performative Encounter between Dance and Music Ivo I. Berg   The combination of dance and music is a common format in performances of the free improvisation scene. The question of the levels on which dancers and musicians interact with each other, that is, in which ways the two artistic practices are related to each other, is …

Reciprocal Exchange in the Art of Dance Accompaniment Philip Feeney   Introduction At the heart of the rapport between dance and music in choreography lies the perennial chicken and egg conundrum of which came first, the music or the dance. Underlying that question is the assumption that one of the art forms needs to take a leading role. One would …

Julia H. Schröder   When the dancer Tomoko Mio danced with Jutta Ravenna’s Data Window sound sculpture SesamSesam (2017), her gestures influenced the sound or indeed the music that the sculpture emitted. In the following, such interactive “danced sound sculptures” are analyzed. A sound sculpture is an art object which emits sound, as the one by Jutta Ravenna or the …

Reality, Appearance, and Virtual Perspectives in Alexander Schubert’s Work Rainer Nonnenmann   “I go to the window and I am opened.” Peter Handke, The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld (1969)1 “Late in the afternoon, the teacher turns off the lights. Like everyone around him. Like thousands throughout the city, re-enacting their boring, quiet lives of yesteryear in virtual …

Animal Movement in Twentieth Century Opera Exemplified by Adaptations of Gotthelf’s Black Spider Leo Dick   It took a long time in the history of the genre before such a legendary and mythically charged animal as the spider appeared on the opera stage for the first time. It may be because the animal is soundless that, for a long time, …