{"id":6628,"date":"2026-02-12T14:17:54","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T13:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/?p=6628"},"modified":"2026-03-05T10:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T09:10:09","slug":"mdwp004-021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/en\/mdwp004-021\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing, Not Knowing, Taking Care"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"subtitle\">Reflections on <em>A Study on Effort<\/em><a href=\"#fn1\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref1\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/h2>\n<h3 class=\"author\"><em>Keir GoGwilt <a href=\"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5664-3035\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/orcid.png\" alt=\"orcid\" width=\"19\" height=\"19\" \/><\/a> and Bobbi Jene Smith<\/em><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<head><\/p>\n<style>\n        .tsquotation strong {\n            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id=\"zp-ID-6628-4511395-VNSH2USN\" data-zp-author-date='GoGwilt-and-Smith-2026' data-zp-date-author='2026-GoGwilt-and-Smith' data-zp-date='2026' data-zp-year='2026' data-zp-itemtype='bookSection' class=\"zp-Entry zpSearchResultsItem\">\n<div class=\"csl-bib-body\" style=\"line-height: 1.35; padding-left: 1em; text-indent:-1em;\">\n  <div class=\"csl-entry\">GoGwilt, Keir, and Bobbi Jene Smith. 2026. \u201cMissing, Not Knowing, Taking Care: Reflections on A Study on Effort.\u201d In <i>Music and Motion \u2013 Interweaving Artistic Practice and Theory in Dance and Beyond<\/i>, edited by Stephanie Schroedter. Vienna and Bielefeld. <a title='Cite in RIS Format' class='zp-CiteRIS' data-zp-cite='api_user_id=4511395&item_key=VNSH2USN' href='javascript:void(0);'>Cite<\/a> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><!-- .zp-Entry .zpSearchResultsItem -->\n\t\t\t<\/div><!-- .zp-zp-SEO-Content -->\n\t\t<\/div><!-- .zp-List -->\n\t<\/div><!--.zp-Zotpress-->\n\n\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"bdaia-toggle close\"><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-open\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-up\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Abstract<\/span><\/h4><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-close\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-down\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Abstract<\/span><\/h4><div class=\"toggle-content\"><p>\nThis dialogue is centered on choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith\u2019s work, A Study on Effort, made and performed in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt. Beyond discussing the work and the process of its making, we parse some of the cultural histories undergirding dance and music collaborations. A few themes recur throughout our dialogue: the historical disciplining of performing bodies; the role of improvisation in navigating personal and traditional expressions; the relationship between effort and pleasure; the relationship between gesture and abstraction; and the imaginative labor that interdisciplinary work requires. We bring in a host of interlocutors whose work influenced the piece: Malcolm Goldstein, James Tenney, Judson Dance Group, the Batsheva Dance Company, JS Bach, and Johann Paul von Westhoff. And we are in dialogue with thinkers like Eduard Hanslick, George Lewis, and Holly Watkins, whose writings help us to parse the webs of influence holding our work and thought.<br \/>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"bdaia-toggle close\"><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-open\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-up\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Outline<\/span><\/h4><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-close\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-down\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Outline<\/span><\/h4><div class=\"toggle-content\"><p>\n<a href=\"#1\">Introduction (Keir)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#2\">Part 1: The Chasm That Yawns between (\u201cmissing\u201d)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#3\">Part 2: The Role of Improvisation (\u201clifting\u201d)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#4\">Part 3: Bach and Westhoff (\u201cdrawing a line,\u201d \u201cpleasure,\u201d \u201cnot knowing\u201d)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#5\">Part 4: Effort and Ecology (\u201ctaking care\u201d)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#6\">Conclusion<\/a><br \/>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<hr>\n<p><!-- \n\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">[btn btnlink=\"\" btnsize=\"medium\" bgcolor=\"#b2b2b2\" txtcolor=\"#000000\" btnnewt=\"1\" nofollow=\"1\"]CHAPTER PDF <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/download-1459070_1280.png\" style=\"vertical-align: middle\" alt=\"Download-Logo\" width=\"17\" height=\"17\">[\/btn]\n\n --><\/p>\n<h4 id=\"1\">Introduction (Keir)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat does effort look like for you, on the violin?\u201d\u2014This was the first question that Bobbi asked me as we began working towards our duet version of <em>A Study on Effort<\/em> (hereafter referred to as <em>ASOE<\/em>), first premiered in June\u00a02016. Given the customarily invisible role of instrumentalists in dance, Bobbi\u2019s curiosity was disarming. Looking back now, the motive behind Bobbi\u2019s question has become clearer. Her work stages a spectrum of physical and emotional efforts, which often go unnoticed in daily life, and which tend to be suppressed in classical images of virtuosity. These include the affective labor of partnership, the physical\/psychological effort of holding a strenuous position, or the intellectual labor of critically examining one\u2019s social and cultural contexts. In <em>ASOE<\/em>, Bobbi and I seek out the pleasure and ritual of effortful practice. We present our effort, or labor\u2014both in the space of performance and the everyday\u2014as continual attention, maintenance, and care, rather than as work with clearly defined outcomes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ASOE initially included six sections, based around prescribed efforts devised by Bobbi:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cmissing,\u201d \u201clifting,\u201d \u201cdrawing a line,\u201d \u201cpleasure,\u201d \u201cnot knowing,\u201d and \u201ctaking care.\u201d Much of our earliest process involved finding ways for me to support, engage, or match Bobbi\u2019s physicality on the violin. In certain cases I accompanied her through the gradual movement of oscillating tones. In others, we found a register of sonic-gestural improvisation that amplified my bodily actions of improvising on the instrument. Elsewhere, I performed baroque dances for solo violin, providing a musical armature for Bobbi\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n<p>This essay on <em>ASOE<\/em> takes the form of a dialogue between Bobbi and me, developed out of our work together over the last five years. We discuss the common ground of musical and physical movements: bodily gestures, emotional shifts, and patterns of musical tones and structures. Our conversation extends beyond the world of <em>ASOE<\/em>, to the personal and cultural histories that shaped its making. For Bobbi, this often means drawing from her experience of testing the limits and effects of her body\u2019s movement through various stages: as a veteran dancer for the Batsheva Company, as an expecting mother, as a choreographer re-adjusting to her body postpartum. Her reflections on her changing body carry over into her attention to the movement of other bodies and beings. She describes this attention as a kind of imaginative, empathic becoming, grounded in the people she choreographs with and the unique qualities of their thought, movement, and effort.<\/p>\n<p>My own reflections on the creative process tend towards the cultural histories determining my work as a musician and scholar. In particular, I consider the enduring aesthetics of musical formalism for instrumental music. The nineteenth century music critic Eduard Hanslick made the most explicit case for formalism, arguing that musical meaning was entirely contained within the composer\u2019s handling of musical form and materials.<a href=\"#fn2\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref2\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>2<\/sup><\/a> This aesthetic paradigm contributed to a pedagogical tradition that understood performing bodies as a material means for expressing the abstract meanings embedded in musical works. I see a natural alliance between Bobbi\u2019s attention to musicians\u2019 bodily labor, and my own interest in modes of expressivity that stay with the bodily and gestural thinking of instrumentalists. Rather than simply looking to compositional structure as a way of directing bodies, in <em>ASOE<\/em> we explore affective and emotional meaning arising out of interactions between our musical-corporeal movements.<\/p>\n<p>Parts one and two of our dialogue focus on the first two sections of <em>ASOE<\/em>: the efforts of \u201cmissing\u201d and \u201clifting.\u201d In the effort of \u201cmissing,\u201d I play James Tenney\u2019s <em>Koan<\/em> to support Bobbi\u2019s movement through various bodily shapes and formations. In the effort of \u201clifting,\u201d I begin with my own improvisations, which amplify the impulsive, bodily gestures of my playing. We find a helpful interlocutor in the violinist-composer Malcolm Goldstein, who visited our early workshops for <em>ASOE<\/em>. I sought out Malcolm after meeting him and hearing about his early experiences composing, improvising, and performing with the Judson dance group. Malcolm\u2019s writings on improvisation and gesture became helpful points of reference as we worked through the contexts shaping our work. Parts one and two of this essay hone in on the opposition between the structural legacy of nineteenth-century formalist aesthetics and more personal, experimental modes of inquiry articulated by Malcolm. Malcolm\u2019s writing presents improvisatory exploration as the assertion of individual voice against the de-personalizing structures of classical pedagogy. We seek a nuanced view that both remains critical of Euro-logics grounded in the occlusion of performing bodies, and also acknowledges the ways in which our individual voices are mediated by collective culture.<\/p>\n<p>Part three of the dialogue turns to the following three sections of <em>ASOE<\/em>: \u201cdrawing a line,\u201d \u201cpleasure,\u201d and \u201cnot knowing.\u201d Over the course of \u201cdrawing a line\u201d and \u201cpleasure,\u201d I perform the \u201cSarabande\u201d and \u201cDouble\u201d from Johann Sebastian Bach\u2019s <em>B\u00a0minor Partita<\/em>. In \u201cdrawing a line,\u201d I walk slowly across the space, and Bobbi walks at her own pace behind me holding a sandbag and drawing a thick line of sand, which eventually bisects the stage. During the next section, I remain at the end of the stage while Bobbi moves a dozen fifty-pound sandbags from one end to the other, and finally mounts the last one and pleasures herself on it. This section underpins one of the primary motivations of <em>ASOE<\/em>: to find and follow pleasure in one\u2019s effort and labor. As a direct staging of a body following its pleasure, it stands in sharp relief to customary depictions of female sexuality in dance. The section reframes pleasure-making and seeking as labor rather than leisure, and as an activity that the whole body follows, not simply the mind and the organs of perception and sensation.<\/p>\n<p>In the effort of \u201cnot knowing,\u201d I play Johann Paul von Westhoff\u2019s <em>Partita in D\u00a0minor<\/em> on one side of the line of sand, with Bobbi dancing on the other. This section presents the clearest conversation between our disciplines. Rather than simply framing my performance as the aural complement to Bobbi\u2019s dance, we attend to the expressive elements of physical gesture that arise from playing an instrument. In performance, Bobbi amplifies and dialogues with my movement through her improvisatory responses. Our discussion here turns to some of our collaborations beyond <em>ASOE<\/em>, in which musical structure, more than bodily gesture, becomes a guiding narrative arc for Bobbi\u2019s choreography. This alternation between bodily gesture and musical structure grounding stage narrative again draws attention to the multimedia movements\u2014bodily, tonal, formal\u2014intersecting music and dance.<\/p>\n<p>Part four of our dialogue turns to the last section of <em>ASOE<\/em>, the effort of \u201ctaking care.\u201d In \u201ctaking care,\u201d Bobbi grafts a plant to her chest and slowly falls, holding herself up, supine. I play Malcolm Goldstein\u2019s <em>Gentle Rain Preceding Mushrooms<\/em>. The grafting of the plant, Bobbi\u2019s trembling effort against gravity, and the direction of Malcolm\u2019s piece to connect the ricochet motion of the bow to one\u2019s breath, direct attention to the material and environmental contingencies beyond our crafted control. Our instruments measure the <em>physis<\/em> that escapes us: involuntary shakes and tremors of the bow, body, and breath; shapes and sounds that fly out of us without landing or achieving; the sprawl of the plant and soil that Bobbi grafts to her chest. This image leads us to reflect upon our ritual efforts, which are seemingly insignificant in the face of globally unfolding ecological crises. In particular, we ask how to continue cultivating the giving, taking, and receiving of care.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout <em>ASOE<\/em>, we negotiate personal meaning, cultural inheritance, and the limits of physicality. We make visible the pleasure of labor and the labor of following pleasure. Despite parsing different personal and cultural histories, we find common cause in seeking out more nuanced descriptions of performing bodies and the efforts, expressions, and meanings intrinsic to them. Our collaborations, in performance and dialogue, remain grounded in our expansive understandings of movement, gesture, and the imaginative becoming of missing, not knowing, taking care.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"2\">Part\u00a01: The Chasm That Yawns between (\u201cmissing\u201d)<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> The music for the first and last sections of <em>ASOE<\/em> came from the violinist, improviser, and composer, Malcolm Goldstein. He visited some of our re\u00adhearsals when we were first putting the piece together in Montreal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> I remember he was watching the first section, \u201cmissing.\u201d We were trying to find your part in relation to the forms I was making, holding, and moving out of. I knew I wanted you to walk the perimeter of the stage, but we were stuck on what you would play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> Malcolm suggested James Tenney\u2019s <em>Koan<\/em>, which begins with the violinist bowing across the low\u00a0G and D strings, and progresses in a continuous, almost imperceptible slide up to an octave above the high\u00a0E string. It\u2019s a meditation across the pitch spaces of the instrument, which follows the physical gesture of the bow arm\u2019s constant movement over alternating strings. I found that by blurring the string-crossings, so that I was actually often playing a double-stop weighted to one string or another, I could in some cases create an intense beating effect, as well as combination\/difference tones, which hung above the fundamental pitches of the bowed strings.<a href=\"#fn3\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref3\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> It heightened the physicality of your sound and gave me the sense of moving through a textured, sonic field. It supported my movement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> Malcolm actually gave me one of the copies of the original postcard on which Tenney scored <em>Koan<\/em>.<a href=\"#fn4\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref4\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>4<\/sup><\/a> Tenney wrote <em>Koan<\/em> for Malcolm\u2014the two of them were close friends. Malcolm\u2019s interpretation of <em>Koan<\/em> is markedly different from my own. He never aspired to play the string crossings in a perfectly even way\u2014the piece engaged and activated the idiosyncrasies of his bodily execution. For my part, I wanted to give the piece a lot of tonal consistency\u2014to create this thick, durational texture that would hold your movement.<\/p>\n<p>Malcolm taught me how the piece worked before showing me the score. And yet, moving the piece from his body to mine\u2014from his proximal relationship to Tenney to the role that <em>Koan<\/em> plays in <em>ASOE<\/em>\u2014created a separation. Malcolm writes of this in the context of European art music, that \u201cwe separate the person playing from the object [i.e. the score] being performed and, in the process of realization, what often is expressed\/experienced is the chasm that yawns between. How then shall a piece-of-music\/the-musician become whole?\u201d<a href=\"#fn5\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref5\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Sheet music titled \"Koan for Solo Violin\" with handwritten notes and annotations. The music features glissando and tremolo.\" width=\"2133\" height=\"2560\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6636\" style=\"width:75%; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-scaled.jpg 2133w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-853x1024.jpg 853w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-125x150.jpg 125w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-768x922.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-1280x1536.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-1707x2048.jpg 1707w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-62x74.jpg 62w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-409x491.jpg 409w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-450x540.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-183x220.jpg 183w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-275x330.jpg 275w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-850x1020.jpg 850w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-408x490.jpg 408w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-203x244.jpg 203w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_01_a_b_neu-217x260.jpg 217w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2133px) 100vw, 2133px\" \/><br \/>\n<span class=\"caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1 and b:<\/strong> <em>Koan<\/em> by James Tenny. a) Scan of a postcard to Keir by Malcolm Goldstein, b) other side of the postcard, with Malcom\u2019s writing. \u00a9 James Tenny.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> That statement reminds me of the time we put on <em>ASOE<\/em> at UNC [Carolina Performing Arts at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill]. I was pregnant, and Ariel [Friedman] did my part. Going into it I had so many doubts about how separable the piece was from my performance, but watching it from the outside, it almost felt like the piece itself was more whole for having another person bring herself into it.<\/p>\n<p>As I\u2019ve begun choreographing larger pieces I\u2019ve become more comfortable stepping outside of my work. But that comfort only comes from having the time and process to build trust and context with dancers. <em>People<\/em> make a piece work; and that\u2019s where I agree with Malcolm. Abstracting a score from the people who\u2019ve made it\u2014if it\u2019s done without care it can come close to appropriating someone\u2019s personal movement as your own.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> There\u2019s something about the immediacy of your movement-making that\u2019s very foreign in the contemporary world of classical music. As classical musicians we inherit nineteenth- and twentieth-century musical discourses, for example, in which it was very common to discuss performance as the faithful reproduction of composers\u2019 musical works and ideas.<a href=\"#fn6\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref6\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>6<\/sup><\/a> Theodor Adorno\u2019s monograph describes performance as the reproduction of the musical work, facilitated by the historical abstraction of notation.<a href=\"#fn7\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref7\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>7<\/sup><\/a> But according to Adorno, even within this history of progressive abstraction, some trace of the body\u2019s gestural, impulsive reflexes still endures, playing an operative role in interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>Malcolm\u2019s statement about the \u201cchasm between\u201d similarly refers to the distance between his contemporary classical musicians and the historical music they interpreted\u2014a distance that he saw as a symptom of societal fragmentation. It was partly geographical, partly historical\/cultural: he was looking at the classical establishment in the States at the time and wondering why they were continually replaying canonical European literature, while he was working with experimental composers and improvisers in NYC, at Columbia, Judson, or in Sheffield, VT. For him, creating music came very much from reflexive, impulsive, and gestural motion\u2014an improvisatory practice that to some degree remains illegible to the tastes and techniques cultivated in classical music.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> But I think that whether you\u2019re inside or outside a piece, or a culture, you always have a fragmented picture. Even when you make all of your own movement, or direct others from outside a piece, you\u2019re playing but one part.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> Perhaps contra Malcolm\u2019s desire for restoring \u201cwholeness,\u201d the effort of \u201cmissing\u201d was always about making visible the vulnerability that comes with feeling apart. I\u2019ve always seen the difficult shapes that you hold in \u201cmissing\u201d as a physical manifestation of the affective labor involved in maintaining relationships at a distance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> Absolutely. At the time I first started making the earliest, solo versions of <em>ASOE<\/em>, I had just left the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, my now-husband, and what had been my home. I danced for Batsheva for ten years\u2014I had started there when I was twenty-one. \u201cMissing\u201d was my attempt to express the effort of this physical and emotional displacement in my body\u2014in all the shakes and quavers and falls that happen when I move through these positions. It wasn\u2019t just missing others; it was also missing a sense of oneself\u2014who I was or continued to be in this moment of transition. And when we\u2019ve come back to the piece after I gave birth, missing those muscles that had been cut in the cesarean section\u2014it made this section of <em>ASOE<\/em> that much harder, and more visible.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"3\">Part\u00a02: The Role of Improvisation (\u201clifting\u201d)<\/h4>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">What does improvisation ask of the performer<br \/> that is so different from printed, through-<br \/> composed pieces of music?<br \/> &#8230;\u00a0perhaps: \u201cWho are <em>you<\/em>?\u201d;<br \/> \u201cHow do <em>you<\/em> think or feel about this moment\/sound?\u201d<br \/> Malcolm Goldstein, <em>The Politics of Improvisation<\/em><a href=\"#fn8\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref8\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>8<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> The experience of working with Malcolm was revelatory, insofar as he had managed to uncouple his movement from conventional practices in an incredibly rich and expressive way. Reading accounts of him taking part as a dancer in Judson, reminds me of participating in your own movement workshops and warm-ups. When I\u2019m in that world, my whole body feels engaged as an expressive agent\u2014I become aware of parts of me that get somewhat muted by inherited logics of instrumental pedagogy. I had certain teachers and coaches, for example, who would criticize aspects of my movement that weren\u2019t directly related to the act of playing the notated score, as though our bodies were only there to serve some preordained ideal of sound. Physical movement was always a way for me to more viscerally experience the music I was playing, and working with you reminded me of how much I had consciously silenced it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> In the context of building movement, improvisation has always been fundamental, since it marks something individual about the person. It\u2019s their way of moving in the world\u2014and that\u2019s exactly what I want them to bring to any creative process. On the other hand, it\u2019s not necessarily a solution\u2014an individual\u2019s improvisatory practice can be easily used or appropriated. There has to be so much care taken in a choreographic process that involves asking questions of your artists, unlocking their personal sounds and movements, and then weaving them into a larger piece. And there are all sorts of limitations around improvisation in this context: the concept of the piece, its dramatic world, your relationship with other characters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> That\u2019s why I feel somewhat ambivalent about Malcolm\u2019s portrayal of improvisation as a way back to a holistic musicianship. He posits improvisation as a way to achieve wholeness in a fragmented society, but there\u2019s no detailed accounting of the way in which improvisation is mediated in the context of groups, or by a collective historical culture. This idea of getting to \u201cyou\u201d\u2014to the un-mediated subject or sound\u2014still runs the risk of reproducing structuring ideologies of European classical culture. In Paris Conservatoire pedagogy, for example, there was a whole lot of rhetoric around finding one\u2019s individual sound, voice, and style, while also serving an institutional paradigm that quite literally took creative agency out of performers\u2019 hands.<a href=\"#fn9\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref9\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>9<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In George Lewis\u2019 article, \u201cImprovised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,\u201d he quotes Malcolm: \u201cWho are you? How do you think or feel about this moment\/sound?\u201d next to Charlie Parker: \u201c\u2018Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don\u2019t live it, it won\u2019t come out of your horn.\u2019 The clear implication is that what you do live does come out of your horn.\u201d<a href=\"#fn10\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref10\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>10<\/sup><\/a> This tenet of Lewis\u2019s \u201cAfrological\u201d music-making\u2014that you are \u201c\u2018telling your own story\u2019\u201d<a href=\"#fn11\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref11\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>11<\/sup><\/a>\u2014is certainly practiced by Malcolm (as suggested by Lewis); and it\u2019s an important counter to claims of autonomy for the musical works and sounds made by modernist Euro-logics. There\u2019s a long history of erasing the lived experience of performing bodies in European music\u2014a history which culminates in claims of absolute music, musical structuralism, and the weird and tortured relationships many classically-trained musicians have with their bodies (i.e. the \u201cchasm\u201d that Malcolm refers to).<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, while finding your own sound is really a cathartic experience, my sense throughout making <em>ASOE<\/em> was that we were as much attending to our own stories as we were to the cultural and social contexts around us: inherited understandings of classical order, disciplinary pedagogies, and cultures of ensembles or dance groups revolving around dominating personalities. In order to make our own labors seen and heard, we had to think through the ways in which they were controlled and mediated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> Done right, being on stage can give your actions more attention and visibility, but there is so much life around that moment on stage that enables it\u2014buying the plant for the last section, \u201ctaking care\u201d; renting the Airbnb; feeding your artists; buying the sandbags; finding sand with the right consistency. And that\u2019s only the work that happens in the weeks leading up to the performance. I can imagine that having an authoritative score, and a long history of interpreting it, could feel like a really secure thing to keep your art going. But you\u2019re right that there\u2019s a lot of space between the magic of something that falls into place against all odds and a well-oiled machine that you play your designated role within.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>ASOE<\/em>, I wanted to put the work of staging next to the work you normally see on stage. And by staging I mean not only the logistics of putting the show together, but the emotional expenses: the precarity of needing the stage, personally and professionally; the lost-ness of finding your way back to it; the feeling of not knowing how people around you manage to be so at ease (seemingly) in their daily lives.<\/p>\n<p>The effort of \u201clifting\u201d\u2014the second section of <em>ASOE<\/em>\u2014was perhaps the clearest physical representation of the feeling of this labor. I\u2019m hoisting my arms up and then down again, until I don\u2019t know which direction I\u2019m going anymore. The disorientation accompanying this movement captures something of this feeling I have of casting off my movement all around me, with no appreciation or sense of it landing or achieving.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> One of your early questions for me as we began working towards this section was, \u201cwhat does lifting look like for you, with the violin?\u201d This was a moment in the piece for me to explore a musical action that wasn\u2019t mediated by the reproduction of a pre-existing score or pedagogical procedure. If your lifting was representing intense labor removed from a recognizable task or outcome, mine also came detached from conventions of patronized music-making. I began with this gesture of just lifting the bow, listening to the rhythms and speeds it brought out of my body. It was more staged than the \u201cpedestrian movement\u201d that Malcolm explored with Judson Dance,<a href=\"#fn12\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref12\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>12<\/sup><\/a> but there was a similar feeling of putting a spotlight on something before or around the actual act of sounding the instrument. There was also a similar feeling of rhapsodic re-discovery in this disorientation from the instrument, which Malcolm describes: \u201cTouch releasing things into motion; gesture realized\/resonances of texture becoming song. (Music: the process of living, sound.) [&#8230;] An overflowing of myself in space.\u201d<a href=\"#fn13\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref13\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>13<\/sup><\/a> This was where I most closely experienced the feeling of \u201cfreeing\u201d myself from the classical understanding of the body as a kind of mechanism for the transmission of the composer\u2019s ideas and spirit.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, I also knew that I was orienting these improvisations in reference to the kinds of physicality you followed in your own \u201clifting.\u201d That is to say, I wasn\u2019t exploring musical ideas or figurations\u2014there was no system of \u201clanguage types\u201d like those structuring the improvisations of Anthony Braxton.<a href=\"#fn14\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref14\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>14<\/sup><\/a> Though I was listening to solos by Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell while working up this section, to get a sense of how they created spaces and movement with a primarily monophonic instrument. I started from a corporeal place: different zones of engagement with the instrument that moved my body in different ways. For example, there were multiple speeds of lifting the bow, sounding it through the air; there was a gestural action of digging and ripping from the low strings, which could bleed into a kind of false-fingering gesture on the high strings, or these shuddering movements of the right arm that would draw my whole body down into the instrument.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> Sometimes I feel your improvisations here\u2014and elsewhere in our work\u2014wanting to become more \u201cmusical,\u201d in the sense of moving towards understandings of form, proportion, or melody. In these cases I\u2019ve always felt that it actually takes away from the rawness of seeing you move like this with the instrument. Because it\u2019s something that goes against your training, it really represents something \u201coutside\u201d the circumscribed space of the musician in dance, whose body is normally obscured, or entirely absent.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A man holds a violin, bow extended, facing a woman in a black dress with raised arms. The setting is dimly lit.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6634\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-104x69.jpg 104w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-737x491.jpg 737w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-810x540.jpg 810w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-320x213.jpg 320w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-309x206.jpg 309w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-850x567.jpg 850w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-735x490.jpg 735w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-366x244.jpg 366w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_02_neu-390x260.jpg 390w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><br \/>\n<span class=\"caption-text\"><strong>Figure 2:<\/strong> Image from \u201clifting\u201d; taken at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, NY, 2016. \u00a9\u00a0Maria Baranova<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"4\">Part\u00a03: Bach and Westhoff (\u201cdrawing a line,\u201d \u201cpleasure,\u201d \u201cnot knowing\u201d)<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> I find that Malcolm\u2019s writing posits certain dichotomies: the European establishment versus American composer-performers; historical canons versus experimental practices; orchestral players versus improvisers. There\u2019s language noting a \u201cEuropean approach\u201d to violin pedagogy,<a href=\"#fn15\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref15\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>15<\/sup><\/a> as opposed to revelatory experiences in which Malcolm says things like \u201cI <em>heard<\/em> the violin.\u201d<a href=\"#fn16\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref16\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>16<\/sup><\/a> For him, the way out of the system of un-thinking musical reproduction is described as exceptional acts of listening\u2014to the sound itself, or to the particulars of the sound-making subject (\u201cwho are <em>you<\/em>?\u201d)\u2014in a way that certainly feels cathartic and necessary for any musician seeking some way out of the most stringent orthodoxies of the classical discipline. Still, I find that this characterization of an unmediated individualism of the player misses a more detailed parsing of all the cultural histories that articulate that self.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> When I first saw Malcolm moving with the violin, there was a freeness there that was incredibly expressive and emotional. He had uncoupled the instrument from his body in a way that you don\u2019t see with most classical musicians. We wanted to put that freeness in the same space as a really personal interpretation of Bach, or of Westhoff. To acknowledge all the emotions in that music. Because how you hear and play Bach is the result of many individual lives experiencing the same pieces.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> In <em>ASOE<\/em>, I draw on solo violin partitas by J.S. Bach and Johann Paul von Westhoff. These partitas consist of dance movements\u2014the \u201cAllemande,\u201d \u201cCourante,\u201d \u201cSarabande,\u201d and \u201cGigue\u201d\u2014which emerge from a musical tradition of violinists serving as dance-masters.<a href=\"#fn17\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref17\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>17<\/sup><\/a> We are calling upon the historical image of the violinist as a figure keeping rhythm and liveliness in a ballroom, but in a way that appears to fly in the face of classical music\u2019s contemporary cultural identity as an aspirational, bourgeois endeavor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> Which is to say, you wouldn\u2019t go to a classical concert held in an industrial warehouse to watch some woman mounting a sandbag.<\/p>\n<p>Although it really wasn\u2019t my intention to make fun of classical music at all. Just in the same way that the effort of \u201cpleasure\u201d [section five of <em>ASOE<\/em>] was completely earnest, contrary to my somewhat flippant description just now. In this section, you\u2019re playing the \u201cSarabande-Double\u201d from Bach\u2019s first <em>B\u00a0minor Partita<\/em>, while I carry a dozen fifty-pound sandbags from one end of the stage to the other. Once I\u2019ve moved the last one, I mount it and begin to pleasure myself on it. Given how often choreographers depict female sexuality in dance, I wanted to just show\u2014this is what pleasure looks like. What it does to a body. What a body has to do to achieve it.<\/p>\n<p>In a conversation I had with the dance critic\/scholar Sima Belmar, she mentioned that this section was significant to her for countering some popularly-held beliefs: that the depiction of sexuality is more \u201cproper\u201d than the taking of proper pleasure; or that a labor that one takes pleasure in is no longer labor.<a href=\"#fn18\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref18\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>18<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is something that links seeking pleasure and making art. Yes, pleasure is this private act with great reward, but it also takes work when done with care and attention. A lot of critics assumed the climax was fake, but I get there every time. The effort of pleasure is not done for the sake of thumbing a nose or anything; it\u2019s also not simply some generic symbol of female empowerment. The point of performing the effort is to really do the work, and that means it\u2019s neither self-indulgent nor a flippant representation of the action.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> We chose the Bach <em>B\u00a0minor Partita<\/em> [the \u201cSarabande\u201d and \u201cSarabande-Double\u201d] for the simple reason that I had it well in my memory and fingers\u2014though its historical relation to dance also presented a sort of justification. Of course, the justification we needed for any of this only came from trying it, and seeing how the music might shape these sections. I remember when you told me the tasks that Bach would complement\u2014drawing a line of sand, moving the sandbags, mounting a sandbag\u2014I was a bit unsure, but also intrigued. It only felt right after several performances, as it became a sort of ritual whose meaning we weren\u2019t trying too hard to curate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> Of course not. I never want to over-determine the world of a piece\u2014the audience, and the performers, need to have the freedom within it to find their own stories.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> That being said, I haven\u2019t stopped trying to interpret it for myself. I keep coming back to the fact that Bach looms large as this composer whose music was seen as operating within the realm of the intellectual\/spiritual. As Bach\u2019s music was revived in the nineteenth century, it became imbued with the idealism of the era, to the point that the violinists teaching and physically playing his works were describing the music as transcending their bodies entirely.<a href=\"#fn19\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref19\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>19<\/sup><\/a> This is a big part of the story of how performers and their bodies\u2014in the classical tradition\u2014get written out of score- and composer-centric histories and aesthetic theories of European art music.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> I choreographed your performance of the Bach \u201cChaconne\u201d for later pieces that we worked on together [<em>With Care<\/em> and <em>Lost Mountain<\/em>]. I remember hearing so many stories within the piece. But whereas <em>ASOE<\/em> really focused on your physicality as a player, those later pieces were more narratively driven. Something about the movement and architecture of the \u201cChaconne\u201d does feel like it moves into a world beyond the body playing it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> Absolutely. And the process of watching you build movement on the \u201cChaconne\u201d really reinforced how narrative that music is. The quartet version of \u201cChaconne,\u201d which appears both in <em>Lost Mountain<\/em> and <em>Caldera<\/em>, turns the piece into two dialogues between two coupled partners. There\u2019s this dramatic moment in <em>Lost Mountain<\/em>, right at the transition to the D\u00a0major section of the \u201cChaconne,\u201d in which you suddenly notice Or [Schraiber], run to him and fall into his arms. This transition is one of only two harmonic modulations in the piece and, given the fact that the whole movement is in variation form, it becomes this really significant moment that is customarily marked by a sudden, affecting shift in timbre. But actually seeing musical shifts, like this one, play out in relationships between people, brings more color and life to this harmonic, structural narrative. It\u2019s amazing to see the \u201cChaconne,\u201d a dance movement which Bach abstracts into this grand formal structure, provide the armature for this intimate story told through you and Or, Ariel [Friedman] and Yiannis [Logothetis].<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a black dress dances expressively on a dimly lit stage, while a man in the foreground plays a violin. A pile of sacks is visible behind her.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6635\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-104x69.jpg 104w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-737x491.jpg 737w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-810x540.jpg 810w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-320x213.jpg 320w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-309x206.jpg 309w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-850x567.jpg 850w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-735x490.jpg 735w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-366x244.jpg 366w, https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/19_GoGwilt_Fig_03_neu-390x260.jpg 390w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><br \/>\n<span class=\"caption-text\"><strong>Figure 3:<\/strong> \u201cNot Knowing\u201d; taken at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, NY, 2016. \u00a9\u00a0Maria Baranova<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> I think that performing Westhoff [<em>Partita in D\u00a0minor<\/em>] with you in <em>ASOE<\/em> prepared the grounds for that later collaboration with the \u201cChaconne.\u201d This section, the effort of \u201cnot knowing,\u201d was about trying to catch each other\u2019s meaning. Often times I would start by just standing there and listening, both to your body and the music. I always wanted more gestural information from you because it was something that I could pick up and transmit to the audience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> This section staged a collision of practices. There\u2019s the context of Westhoff\u2019s composition, which represents a nascent practice of solo violin concert music\u2014as opposed to dance music. But then there\u2019s Malcolm\u2019s world of \u201cgesture realized\/resonances of texture becoming\u201d; this unlearning of classical pedagogy, and a turn towards bodily impulse as the unlocking of a more personal \u201csong.\u201d I felt pulled between these worlds, until I realized that actually this tension creates a third term. That is, the choreographed movements of playing repertoire, like the Westhoff, create their own impulsive reverberations through the body. And given how much documented attention has been given to the bodily discipline of the violinist since the turn of the eighteenth century, we have this resource of bodily thinking, which might be mobilized in expressive ways. That is, subtly extending or exaggerating the choreographed gestures of violin-playing created some more common terrain between the two of us\u2014a kind of rhythmic and affective flow that traveled between the music and our movement.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"5\">Part\u00a04: Effort and Ecology (\u201ctaking care\u201d)<\/h4>\n<p>Listening to music, we unconsciously experiment with being other. Music creates a multitude of virtual worlds, or virtual configurations of space and time, that listeners can vicariously experience as alternative forms of embodiment, affect, spirit, thought, or some combination thereof.<br \/> <em>Holly Watkins, \u201cOn Not Letting Sounds Be Themselves\u201d<\/em><a href=\"#fn20\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref20\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>20<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> In the last section of the piece, the effort of \u201ctaking care,\u201d I am holding a plant to my chest. I am holding the plant against me and holding myself up off the ground. The strain of holding myself up makes the plant tremble. And my voice also trembles when I begin to hum with you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> I\u2019m playing Malcolm\u2019s <em>Gentle Rain Preceding Mushrooms<\/em> (1992), a piece that he wrote in memoriam for John Cage after he passed. The first four notes of the piece, sounded and then held over three strings for an extended period, spell C-A-G-E. After these notes are held, Malcolm instructs the violinist to drop and ricochet the bow across the strings, playing these four notes in different configurations. Eventually we begin humming\u2014first you, and then me as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> This is the first time in the piece when we really sit together, without moving. It\u2019s also the first time that either of us uses our voice. People love interpreting this image. Does the dirt represent death, burial? Does the plant represent re-birth?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> What strikes me, more than the symbolism of the image, is how much goes into cultivating it. Every time we do <em>ASOE<\/em> you spend hours traveling to different shops to find the perfect plant, with just the right amount of color, height, and sprawl.<\/p>\n<p>The plant is itself an expressive instrument that echoes and projects your trembling, and your singing. Just as, in <em>Gentle Rain<\/em>, my breath is the impetus that sends the bow bouncing, connecting these somewhat uncontrolled movements to my exhalation. It mirrors the way in which the soil clumps and breaks across your chest. The plant\u2019s movement is fused with yours, but its materials retain their own patterns of movement and dispersal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> Actually, so often what motivates my choreography is this idea of identifying as something totally foreign to myself: a mountain, an arrow, an anchor, a long dirt road. Each thing has its own movement, its own inner speed and momentum. Just this exercise of identifying with animate and inanimate things whose experience I\u2019ll never have creates so many questions: How does it move? What is the sensation of its growth? How does it engage our eyes, bodies, and imaginations?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keir:<\/strong> The relative stasis of this last section of <em>ASOE<\/em> draws attention to the connections between our bodies, instruments, and voices; the movement of my bow, connected to my breath, and to my humming (as per Malcolm\u2019s score). This singing is connected to your singing, which is connected to the effort of holding yourself up. And all the resulting trembles are heard both in your breath and in the movement of the plant and soil on your chest.<\/p>\n<p>This cycle of empathic becoming, which you describe as a fundamental choreographic method, really underlines the commonalities between music and movement. Holly Watkins describes music as a medium that \u201cspurs to imagine creating, being, or undergoing an almost endless variety of dynamic movement that [\u2026] need not be heard as expressions of human subjectivity or embodiment.\u201d<a href=\"#fn21\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref21\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>21<\/sup><\/a> Rather than pointing to an exceptional act of listening that reveals the individual subject, Watkins is describing the \u201cdynamic movements\u201d of music, which allow us to \u201cexperiment with being ither\u201d than human.<\/p>\n<p>I read Watkins\u2019 attention to music\u2019s empathic potentials as a strategy to expand our ability to imagine the present climate crisis. I don\u2019t think that we\u2019re making such a direct argument, but part of the work of <em>ASOE<\/em> was that it forged connections I hadn\u2019t previously seen in a lifetime of playing the violin: connections between instrumental practice and the study of affective and intellectual labor, the representation of sexuality and the effortful pursuit of pleasure, the elements of our work that never escape the cultural contexts of our histories, or the physical constraints of our bodies in the world. Thinking through my culture and craft continually nudges my personal work closer to the paralyzing precariousness of this existential moment, and has allowed me to keep making in spite of it, in relation to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bobbi:<\/strong> In this section, \u201ctaking care,\u201d the world of the piece suddenly becomes much smaller, more intimate. It allows the audience to focus on the movement of the plant and our voices. You were talking earlier about the idea of performance as the global reproduction of revered works, and I see it too in the industry emphasis on internationalism, constant touring, being all over for everyone. I think this moment, with Malcolm\u2019s elegy for his friend, is the opposite of that. It\u2019s about paying attention to what you have in front of you, mourning what you\u2019ve lost, growing what you can. Finding the rituals that keep you going so that you can be in a position to give and take care.<\/p>\n<p>This was always the aim in <em>ASOE<\/em>. To find the basic tasks to make our labor visible. Doing the tasks is difficult, but if they are clear you don\u2019t have to worry about making them more than what they are. Over the last five years they\u2019ve become a measure of personal growth and decay. There\u2019s something beautiful about noticing what becomes harder for your body. The parts of yourself that you can no longer control, that were there but now are missing. But in that missing, in that loss, there is the potential for new growth.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"6\">Conclusion<\/h4>\n<p>This paper\/dialogue points to another labor that is traditionally thought to lie outside the space of performance, and yet plays an outsized role in creative work. This is the labor of research and reflection: the acquisition and synthesis of knowledge that may or may not be articulated in scholarly terms. Underlying any artist\u2019s approach to the act of making music or movement is a set of philosophical precepts that often go unnoticed and unquestioned. What we perform in the space of our dialogue is the work of excavating these precepts, holding them at a distance, and deciding what parts of them to keep, and what to shed.<\/p>\n<p>The process of making and performing <em>ASOE<\/em> allowed me (Keir) to explore common misgivings about inherited tenets of the classical discipline: its preoccupation with historical genius, its work and score-centeredness, its uncompromising directions, structures, and hierarchies. Also, its erasure of the world outside of it\u2014a neglect that is baked into the inherited wisdom of classical music\u2019s historical objectivity. Joining the craft of violin-playing with Bobbi\u2019s study on effort helped me to approach sound as the extension and reverberation of extramusical considerations, rather than as the outcome of a predetermined goal. Still, the studied craft of playing an instrument is precisely what allows me to engage a collective history built by generations of other bodies and minds. It is its own effortful practice, the labor and pleasure of which grounds me in the work of people before and around me.<\/p>\n<p>In this essay, we have endeavored to show how dialogical reflection enriches opportunities for creative collaboration across our disciplines. Beyond this, we have found a productive dialectic between personal experience and specific modes of cultural-historical research. While we seek to better understand the contingencies of each other\u2019s lives and labors, we also understand the ways in which they are grounded in contexts beyond our individual experience. Our hope is that this synthesis of craft, bodily knowledge, and scholarly research, helps us speak more personally and truthfully in relation to our present cultures and ecologies.<\/p>\n<section id=\"footnotes\" class=\"footnotes footnotes-end-of-document\" role=\"doc-endnotes\">\n<hr \/>\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1\">\n<p>Special thanks to Sima Belmar, Ay Cimini, and Celeste Oram for their en\u00adcour\u00adaging, insightful, and discerning commentary on this essay in its many stages; to Malcolm Goldstein and Marta Miller for their generous guidance in the making of <em>ASOE<\/em>; to Matthew Aucoin, Jen Chen, Zack Winokur, and AMOC for our continuing work together.<a href=\"#fnref1\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn2\">\n<p>Lee Rothfarb and Christoph Landerer, <em>Eduard Hanslick\u2019s \u201cOn the Musically Beautiful\u201d: A New Translation<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).<a href=\"#fnref2\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn3\">\n<p>Hermann von Helmholtz describes combination and difference tones as such: \u201cThese tones are heard whenever two musical tones of different pitches are sounded together, loudly and continuously. The pitch of a combinational tone is generally different from that of either of the generating tones, or of their harmonic upper partials.\u201d Hermann Helmholtz, <em>On The Sensations of Tone,<\/em> trans. Alexander J. Ellis (New York: Dover Publications, 1954), 152-3.<a href=\"#fnref3\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn4\">\n<p><em>Koan<\/em> was one of Tenney\u2019s postal pieces, which he wrote on postcards and mailed to friends. Frank J. Oteri, \u201cJames Tenney: Postcards from the Edge,\u201d in <em>New Music Box<\/em>, accessed 2 May 2021, https:\/\/nmbx.newmusicusa.org\/james-tenney-postcards-from-the-edge\/.<a href=\"#fnref4\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn5\">\n<p>Malcolm Goldstein, \u201cTowards a Whole Musician in a Fragmented Society,\u201d in <em>I.S.A.M. Newsletter<\/em>\u00a0XII, no. 2 (May 1983): 6.<a href=\"#fnref5\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn6\">\n<p>In his book <em>Beyond the Score<\/em>, musicologist Nicholas Cook takes issue with music theorists Adorno and Schenker, who base their analytical methods on a common understanding of performance as the reproduction of musical works and structures; Nicholas Cook, <em>Beyond the Score<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 89.<a href=\"#fnref6\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn7\">\n<p>Theodor W. Adorno, <em>Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes, a Draft and Two Schemata,<\/em> trans. Weiland Honban, ed. Henri Lonitz (New York: Wiley, 2014), 168.<a href=\"#fnref7\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn8\">\n<p>Malcolm Goldstein, \u201cThe Politics of Improvisation,\u201d in <em>Perspectives of New Music<\/em> 21, no. 1\/2 (Autumn 1982 \u2013 Summer 1983): 89.<a href=\"#fnref8\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn9\">\n<p>Kailan Rubinoff, \u201cToward a Revolutionary Model of Music Pedagogy,\u201d in <em>Journal of Musicology<\/em> 34, no. 4 (2017): 473-514.<a href=\"#fnref9\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn10\">\n<p>George Lewis, \u201cImprovised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,\u201d in <em>Black Music Research Journal<\/em> 22 (2002): 215-46, 243.<a href=\"#fnref10\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn11\">\n<p>Ibid., 241.<a href=\"#fnref11\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn12\">\n<p>Jay Arms, <em>The Music of Malcolm Goldstein<\/em> (master thesis, University of Cali\u00adfornia, Santa Cruz, 2012), 12.<a href=\"#fnref12\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn13\">\n<p>Arms quoting LP jacket of Malcolm Goldstein\u2019s <em>Soundings for Solo Violin<\/em> (1980); Arms, <em>The Music of Malcolm Goldstein<\/em>, 40.<a href=\"#fnref13\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn14\">\n<p>Mike Heffley, \u201cThe Solo Music\u2019s Axis (Tradition\/Innovation),\u201d in <em>The Music of Anthony Braxton<\/em> (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1996), 212-57.<a href=\"#fnref14\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn15\">\n<p>Arms, <em>The Music of Malcolm Goldstein<\/em>, 38.<a href=\"#fnref15\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn16\">\n<p>Arms quoting interview with Dan Warburton in the <em>Paris Transatlantic<\/em> (April 2006); Arms, <em>The Music of Malcolm Goldstein<\/em>, 38.<a href=\"#fnref16\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn17\">\n<p>David D. Boyden, <em>The History of Violin Playing from Its Origins to 1761 and Its Relationship to the Violin and Violin Music<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).<a href=\"#fnref17\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn18\">\n<p>Sima Belmar and Bobbi Jene Smith, \u201cDance in Conversation: Bobbi Jene Smith with Sima Belmar,\u201d in <em>The Brooklyn Rail<\/em> (February 2019), accessed 2 May 2021, https:\/\/brooklynrail.org\/2019\/02\/dance\/BOBBI-JENE-SMITH-with-Sima-Belmar.<a href=\"#fnref18\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn19\">\n<p>For example, the well-known twentieth-century violin pedagogue, Leopold Auer writes: \u201cIt has been said and truly that these Sonatas, \u2018notably in the movements in polyphonic style, represent the victory of the spirit over material limitations,\u2019 and this applies especially to the \u2018Ciaconna.\u2019\u201d Leopold Auer, <em>Violin Master Works and Their Interpretation<\/em> (New York: Carl Fischer, 1925), 21.<a href=\"#fnref19\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn20\">\n<p>Holly Watkins, \u201cOn Not Letting Sounds Be Themselves,\u201d in <em>CR: The New Cen\u00adten\u00adnial Review<\/em> 18, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 76.<a href=\"#fnref20\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn21\">\n<p>Ibid.<a href=\"#fnref21\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflections on A Study on Effort1 Keir GoGwilt and Bobbi Jene Smith &nbsp; Introduction (Keir) \u201cWhat does effort look like for you, on the violin?\u201d\u2014This 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\u00a02016. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schroedter-ed-music-and-motion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Missing, Not Knowing, Taking Care &#8211; mdwPress<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/mdwp004-021\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Missing, Not Knowing, Taking Care &#8211; 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