In my last semester of college, I found myself involved in all these projects with choreographers, which was funny because I’d never once had the thought — or the knowledge — on how to do so. I’d attended one dance concert in freshman year, and I thought it was so cool, but I perhaps felt that working with dancers was maybe a little out of my depth.
Then Fall semester of 2019 happened, and BOOM! — by the time I graduated the next semester, I had 3 full dance pieces to my name; around 8 miniatures, and had already started making plans for a new collaboration with yet another dancer. I often think about how all these amazing opportunities to work with choreographers suddenly fell onto my lap, interconnected in some way but ultimately random and coincidental:
A COMPOSER WALKS INTO A LOBBY
The first collaboration started when I walked into the Steinhardt lobby on the 2nd floor, where music students usually hang/study, and found two people dancing. I was planning to study myself, but as I laid out my study supplies, I realised I found it difficult to look away from the dancers. They were gorgeous, and they were both Black, and their movement — nevermind that they were ‘just’ rehearsing — was so poised and meticulous that I just had to go up to them. I didn’t have a project in mind, but I did have some random voice note where I’d written a song recently, and that suddenly felt full of potential. In rapid minutes, I had already connected the dots: dancers, voice note song, NYU Pulsing & Shaking Festival (the score call had just gone out), and before I knew it, some invisible force carried my awkward body right in front of the dancers, with a not-so-coherent plan but a lot of enthusiasm. Fast-forward 4 months into Spring of 2020, my piece, (no), i don’t want to Leave You Whole/’cause that may Leave Me Empty, was performed at the Frederick Loewe Theatre with the two choreographers that I’d met in the lobby, and a violinist. The whole experience was breathtaking. Below are some stills (credits to Gianfranco Bello) from the performance:
WHEN HAVING A PROFILE PHOTO ON YOUR GMAIL HELPS…?
The second collaboration kind of came as a result of the third collaboration. When time for class registration (for my final semester in college!) came, I needed to take a music elective, and saw a class whose premise was to explore the collaboration process between composers and choreographers (think: Cage/Cunningham<3) by pairing up composition majors in Steinhardt with dance majors in Tisch. I was having some difficulty registering, and so I reached out to the professor of the class to ask for help. We’d never met, never heard of each other; but I guess he took note of my Gmail photo and saw that I was Black. A couple weeks later, one of his students, a Black female choreographer, was looking for a Black female composer to write music for her upcoming performance, centered around the experience of being a Black woman. He reached out to me (I was one of few, only 2, black women composers at NYU) and I warmly accepted. The performance was stunning, and I ended up creating a beautiful friendship with the uber-talented choreographer that was Sarai Daniels. Here are some stills from the performance:
ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CLASSES OF MY ENTIRE DEGREE
The third collaboration came as a result of said class, that partnered composers and choreographers, which no doubt was top 5 fave college classes I took. For the first half of the semester, we were paired with a different choreographer each week and came up with miniature pieces based on different collaboration models and/or different prompts. Then, we chose a choreographer to stick with for the longer, final project, and that’s how Sarah Lutzky & I created the (space) in between. The pandemic meant that works we’d began to plan for a concert stage turned into dance films, which was a bit of a bummer at first, but it did mean that we got to experiment with videography and video editing in a way that we hadn’t thought about before. And it also meant that we got really good records of the collaborations, too.
the start of something new…
Everyone’s final pieces were livestreamed on facebook in a small concert. It was a lovely ending to the class; but more so the beginning of my collaborating with choreographers! At the time of writing this, it’s October 2020, and I have worked with so many of choreographers in such a short time, and each experience has felt so rich and rewarding. My relationship to music has always been so visceral, and so it perhaps it felt so natural to work with dancers/choreographers as an extension of that connection. I’m ever in awe with their expression and movement, and inspired by the vulnerability it takes to work with their bodies so often in such an intimate way. I’m super excited to keep being a part of the world of movement.
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