Just to remind you, here's the upcoming show:
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| Photo: JHsu Media |
March 15th, 2019Friday at 6:00pmMillennium Stage, Kennedy Center
Katie Sopoci Drake presents an evening of dance featuring the Mountain Empire Performance Collective in Is It Through You, a multi-artist collaboration directed by Katie Sopoci Drake that takes inspiration from Whitman's poem "To A Pupil"; and her company Spacetime Dance in Awakening which floods the stage with sound and motion designed to awaken our senses to nature.
Awakening features special guest company LucidBeings Dance.
For Awakening, which has 6 distinct sections, I've used a mixture of gorgeous music (with permission & compensation, naturally) by Hildur Guðnadóttir ("Opaque" & "Aether") and Judy Kang ("Over the Moon" & "Sleepwalk") as well as copious amounts of natural and unnatural sounds that were gathered, recorded, and arranged by yours truly.
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| Photo: Rob Cannon |
Since awakening is a piece juxtaposing human and natural environments, I chose music that emulated the feelings of wonder, danger, and awe I wished to convey through the different sections.
In Far Afield, a trio depicting the wide open spaces we create and stumble upon, I used Kang's dreamy "Over the Moon" embedded into two created sound landscapes: A sunny field out in the country-side, much like Sky Meadows that crosses the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, and a city field with a distant road.
Kang's music gives us that languorous feeling we have on a hot summer's day. We find respite we find wide-open spaces. We create these spaces not only to have room to play and find perspective, but to create a distance between ourselves and other people. This is the rest we crave, this distance. In this environment, our thoughts can freely roam like the birds and butterflies I found myself watching up on the field in Sky Meadow.
Listen and watch Far Afield
In Subterranean, a group work that cozily travels through underground caves and subways, I pulled sounds from an underwater cave, a wet and dripping cave, a subway platform, and distant wind through a canyon. I had plenty of cave sounds, but the underwater cave gave me that deep and muted sound that I desired to create a feeling of closeness.
Listen and watch Subterranean at timestamp 6:20
For Petrichor, a crepuscular solo that happens between a bedroom and a stormy forest in the moments before sleep, I used Guðnadóttir's "Opaque" nestled into the sounds of both a bedroom, a storm, and night creatures.
For the bedroom, I used sounds of squeaking floorboards, footsteps on carpet, the making of a bed and settling of sheets, the rain against a windowpane, and the sound of opening that window to let in the night's thunderstorm. To create my forest at night, I used the sounds of driving rain, an oncoming thunderstorm, crickets, and various night creatures that may signal the shift between day and night creatures.
Listen and watch Petrichor
Crossing is a complex group work about risk that pulls elements from water crossings spanning human civilization. Not only did I need a sense of the human elements of wonder, danger, and emotion needed to leave a homeland or explore beyond, I required the sea's character as well.
I chose Guðnadóttir's "Aether" for it's sense of wonder and it's fantastic second section that blends woodwinds to give the piece a gentle rolling feeling. For the soundscape, I open with gentle waves under the zither music to set the landscape. Then I transitioned by adding in some wind through a canyon to give us the sound of depth and foreboding. The sounds of a creaking ship (my favorite) come in as the waves are layered on one another and I add additional wind and sea sounds.
Next comes the storm. I added the sound of driving rain, a blizzard (this gives us the additional cover of sound needed to feel the rain whipping past our faces on the sea), and a wet afternoon rain to mimic the sound of drips coming off of an overhang. I added in the sounds of people coming into the thunderstorm to give us a sense of business and concern.
Then we find some respite with the woodwind section as I back off of the wind, rain, and thunderstorm sounds. I transitioned it into mostly wind through a canyon and blizzard on top of the waves to bring us back to a sense of depth and danger. I slowly added in more snow and a snippet of a choir to give a ringing in our ears as the thunderstorm descends upon the ship's occupants again. You should get a sense that there is an open question if our crew survives this last storm.
Listen and watch Crossing
Pinnacle is my "ambition" solo. It simultaneously sets us high on a skyscraper and a high peak. Both landscapes set us apart and require effort to build, climb, and survive at their hight. I chose Kang's Sleepwalk for it's soaring strings, it's climbing passages, precarious dissonances, and enticing rhythms.
The sounds I chose to embrace Kang's work are: sounds from the top of a NYC building with traffic below, ambient noise from a cathedral, our canyon wind again, and wind through pine trees. I weave and layer these back and forth to give our soloist a chance to exist in and manipulate both spaces with her movement.
Listen and watch Pinnacle
Lastly, I used elements of each of these pieces and soundscapes to create the word of State Change, my own solo that whips between natural and performative states. I use a bit of each environment in order to foreshadow what is to come. The rapid environmental shift in sound mimics my own state change between worlds, feelings, and performative states. I feel the rain as I walk over to receive the next instructions from my imaginary director. I try out the new movement and dance it into the next environment.
Listen and watch State Change
Next up: I'll reveal the sound elements of Is It Through You.
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