Nothing Personal

numbersixspeaks:

Is it easier to perform with a live orchestra/choir? I should think that it would at least be moderately more, er, interesting, as live performances tend to be. I hate pre-recorded music because I subscribe to the theory that bodies/brains/hands/feet make another player in any specific performance (not in the “audience participation” way, more the John Cage way) and that in some respects the warmth of lots of people in a crowded space make a path for a very unique experience for artist and listener. But then again I also believe you never play the same note twice ever (and shouldn’t, really) so take my thoughts on music with the largest grain of kosher salt you’ve got lying around.

Oh you have a soul-sister in me on this one!  Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to live performance.  You can’t capture it in recording, especially not movement.  There is something between bodies that is not between bodies and electrical devices.  Cameras/microphones do not have all the senses that we have.  So not only do I believe that you never dance the same step twice, but in fact when you look at a video of yourself dancing those steps you are seeing a pale shadow, a mere sliver, of what actually happened at the time of recording.

Dancing to live music is a joy and an honor.  In some ways it is more difficult than dancing to a recording because you give over the control of tempo to the musician.  When it’s recorded you can memorize it and know what it will be.  But if you know the music, even if the tempo is different or if there are retards in places you didn’t expect, if you are a musical person you can put that inside your body in the same way even though it is not something you expected, and you can put the steps where they belong even if it means doing them differently - because after all, speeding up or slowing down almost any step requires executing it differently, using different muscles and a different concept of the physical process.  I found that to be so exhilarating, dancing with an orchestra this season, coming to those moments when the orchestra did something unexpected and mid-jump or turn I felt my body re-calibrating and making it right.  It’s like getting to be the instrument, I guess, and also getting to be the musician.

But the less-musically inclined dancers, the ones who are more about the physical side and care more about how their lines look and how their tricks come off than they do about musical expression, they can get annoyed at how musicians are so apt to change things on a whim.  Especially tempo.  You guys have an entirely different concept of the words “slow” and “fast.”