Esthetics of Movement in Klebe/Gsovsky’s Menagerie and Zimmermann/Roleffs Kontraste Adrian Kuhl   In the phase of cultural reconstruction, ballet played an important role in the post-war German Federal Republic.1 Guest performances by renowned ballet ensembles of the occupying powers such as the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the Rambert Ballet and the New York City Ballet, which appeared in western Germany in the course …

Adriana Hölszky’s Roses of Shadow and Deep Field in Martin Schläpfer’s Choreography Barbara Dobretsberger   With Roses of Shadow, Adriana Hölszky has presented what she describes in the subtitle of the work as a sound choreography for soprano and eight instrumentalists. Although the work was commissioned in 2016/17 for a Düsseldorf choreography by Martin Schläpfer, the composer refrains from designating it as a …

On the Relationship Between Dance and Music in the Works of Stephanie Thiersch and Brigitta Muntendorf Gerald Siegmund   Arms wave, hips turn, torsos twist and stretch. Bent over his turntables and computer equipment, Belgian DJ Elephant Power, aka Nicolas Baudoux, plays a set of euphoric techno music that produces an irresistible pulse the seven dancers cannot resist. Huddled together …

Contemporary Theatre Music in Relation to Gesture and Space David Roesner   Introduction In the past couple of decades, theatre music in German-speaking theatre has seen major developments, rendering it a practice far from “incidental”2 and subservient. In particular, sounds and motions have been mobilised: moving out of the orchestra pit and onto the stage as well as from fixed …

Resonance, Affect, and Resistance in Open-Form Music–Dance Performance Jan Schacher   Introduction Sound can be perceived as movement, action, and intention, particularly when set in a frame that says “music,” “performance,” “stage,” and above all, “listen to me.” And movement may be perceived as sound, resonance, and vibration, as an enveloping action that creates a space of echo, melody, and …

Daphne Leong 1   Winner of the French dance press’s Prix de la critique for best performers, Salva Sanchis and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s 2017 choreography to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme brings dance composition and improvisation together in a unique response to the iconic album.2 Sanchis told me: “My objective is always to add some sense of dimension—to create …

Situated in an Interactive Music Environment Jin Hyun Kim and Marta Rizzonelli 1   Introduction Motion-based interindividual behaviors are often observed in contexts of verbal interaction. Some of them are known as speech-accompanying non-verbal gestures that support or replace verbal expressions. Although processing such gestures does not always engage the neural language-processing regions, especially in the case that speech is …

Structured Movement as Aisthetic Labor1 Birgit Abels   Introduction Neo-phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz (1928-2021) considers any and all creative processes as intrinsically dancing movements, owing to the nature of what he terms “suggestions of motion” (Bewegungssuggestionen): The felt body, not the artist’s mind, receives the inspiration: in the felt body’s perception, a mentally or emotionally conceived motif grows from suggestions of …

Theorizing Sound through Conductors’ Movement in Experimental Music Drake Andersen   Despite John Cage’s insistence that his compositions were devoted to letting the sounds “be themselves,” it is this dictum, rather than any particular sound, that most reliably persists in listeners’ minds.1 In fact, in looking back at postwar experimental music as a whole, it seems that the aesthetic theories …