I had the pleasure of performing in both of Solo’s performances in Africa Moves. One was entitled Days of 13 and the second was called Dancer Ma Vie and both had live music tired with silence or recorded music.
As a performer it was really interesting to me the way Solo choreographed. We learned a bunch of combinations and then he broke them up and assigned different performers to each movement set. He would sing the rhythm that he wanted and we would base our timing entirely off of that. When we finally had live music, it was definitely a challenge getting the movement to match the music and vice versa. Solo would sing the rhythm and then the drummer would pick it up, but it inevitably sounded different on the live drums. Because we were so stuck doing it to the rhythm in our heads or listening to Solo it was very difficult to match up and also frustrating because it was out of our comfort zone. It made it something else. however, when we finally got everything to match it was unbelievably great dancing with live music. It added a much needed element and energy to the movement.
In one of the pieces we also used recorded music as well. As a performer I liked using that because we learned the movement specifically to that music so we knew that we would be on the beat. The switch from live music to recorded music was the most difficult to manage and it took a lot of trial and error to get it to where we needed it to be. There was a sudden change in the air whenever the recorded music dropped out and the live music picked up. The latter felt more wholesome to me and created a perfectly balanced piece. That’s at least how it felt performing it.
As a performer we were never told what each piece was about..we just did the movement so it was very enlightening hearing what the audience got from each showing because our understanding was so completely different. While dancing in the piece I thought of it as a bunch of sections culminating in one whole thing so while maintaining the wholeness of the piece in mind, it was easy for me to dance and gain some sort of understanding from it.
choreography2015 