Saturday, 14 February, 2009| Comments | Make A Comment | Share on Facebook
No, I'm not going to mock the hideousness of Lloyd Webber or the west end, I feel its pretty self explanatory.
However I am going to talk about the way contemporary dance uses music. If a piece is made collaboratively with the music, that's great, fine and dandy. Both grow together and intertwine to form the final finished product.
If your using music with its own context, your generally using it to add another layer to the piece. For example if someone was repeatedly running into a brick wall to death metal...then the music supports the action, if they are doing it to the tellytubbies theme tune, then it immediately becomes funny (or ever so slightly disturbing).
An old Russian theater practitioner once said "thou shall not use music, unless thou intends to add another layer to thous work, not just repeat what thou is doing on stage through thous music"...or something like that anyway.
Here's the sting, If a piece of music is finished, it is a piece of choreography in its own right, it's an entity in its own right, a lot of effort has gone into making it just right.
Then if some choreographer comes along and plays the music in the background while making some poncy dance that barely relates to the music, and even if it does relate, it's on the most shallow of levels and probably through luck...then this is silly choreography and should not be applauded or even viewed by anyone. How arrogant?!
"I'm going to interpret this music because the person who made it obviously made it as background music for me to dance to"
How would choreographers like it if someone were to take their finished piece of choreography...then...erm....project it in the background then dance in front of it? (ok so the comparison doesn't quite work)
It's like having the Mona Lisa, then putting it in a cupboard, then taking photographs of the cupboard door, on which you painted your own amateur version of it. (ok, struggling for similes as well, time to end )
