New American Talent/Dance - Amy's Blog

DONE!

2008-01-17T15:28:00.001-08:00

Ah ha! The ballet is finished, which means perhaps I'll stop dreaming about it incessantly. Which would be good as I have not slept a whole night through since I've been here. We have one more rehearsal day, four more hours, to really tweak things and get the feel for the work. For a ballet "finished" is a relative term - there is always further that you can explore an idea.
But today was exciting, the dancers and I talked allot about the emotional intent behind the work and I feel they really GET it, and that they are really committed to expressing with an impact. They are all so gorgeous, we ran the last two sections at the end of the day and they were simply stunning.

Notes from composer Scott Johnson

2008-01-14T16:23:00.001-08:00

This music is so fantastic. The more I really get to understand what's been done the more I realize that it is brilliant. I recently asked Scott Johnson, the composer of the String Quartet for some of his thoughts, they follow:

"How It Happens is based on the sampled voice of maverick American journalist I. F. Stone, whose idealistic and democratic vision of advancement for the human race was kept sharp by a no-nonsense reporter's eye, an intellectual's sense of history, and a delight in subversive humor. To me, Stone seems to have been cut from the same cloth as that strain of independent American composers who view their parent culture with both love and disappointment, turning these conflicting feelings into an engine driving their efforts.

In Stone’s own words (taken from 1980’s NPR radio broadcasts), How It Happens chronicles the collision between humanity's new-found technological power and an ancient inheritance: our tribal impulse to band together and do violence against strangers, who are themselves following identical urges. Written in 1991-94, while the resurgence of religious and ethnic conflicts eroded the optimism that accompanied the end of the Cold War, this piece often seems to prefigure today's headlines. As globalization insures the collision of previously isolated cultures and religions, Stone’s meditations on the mixed legacy of our species grow ever more incisive, and his call to replace superstition and blood ties with reason and humanism grow ever more urgent.

...Stone's expressive and animated voice reinforced the first observations I made when I began to work with recorded speech: the desire to convince someone of something seems to accentuate the musicality of human speech. People engaged in personal persuasion or public rhetoric speak with a wider pitch and dynamic range, exaggerating nuances like the consistently pitched low pedal points that project certainty and authority, or the rising contours of uncertainty or questioning: listen to a newscaster, a salesperson, a member of the clergy, a child. I suspect that a formalized exaggeration of speech patterns had a large part to play in the origins of melody among early humans; but unfortunately sounds leave no fossils." Scott Johnson

After Week 1

2008-01-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

I've woken up to a beautiful Austin day after my first week of working with the dancers. They've been wonderful, this company laughs so much and works so hard - what a wonderful combination. The dancers are a diverse group, each one has something so different to offer, their diversity make a rich palette to create from. Gina's gorgeous emotional interpretation of movement, Michelle's enthusiasm and energy, the bizarre and beautiful tangle of exceptionally long limbs that is Rebecca and Chris, the balance of strength and delicacy in Ashley, the men all strong, exceptional partners who are willing to try whatever bizarre things I may ask of them. I feel like a sculptor, slowly taking away the emptiness to reveal the ballet, which is waiting to be born.