As part of our respective research programs, TAMU Dance professors Bergeron and Armstrong and I won a Collaboration Grant from the IDHMC in support of developing feasible approaches to incorporating live media in contemporary dance performance.

While dance is an art form that is typically viewed live more than other disciplines, logistical challenges commonly leave dancers to adapt prerecorded music to their performances. TAMU’s PerfTech (Performance Technology) initiative develops methods to use technology in-and-as live performance without simply replacing traditional instruments with synthesized copies. With modern live technology techniques, we plan to merge the early twentieth century technique of Foley art for live radio broadcasts with the techniques of musique concrète (fixed media art music) developed since the late 1940s to develop approaches to building meaningful connections between dance and sound through common semiotic ground. Similarly, we explored incorporating digital imagery into this intermedia performance.

We developed this in a collaborative performance called Deck in four brief movements, each exploring a different sense of the word: “Hit the Deck,” “Wooden (Backyard) Deck,” “Decked Out,” and “Deck of Cards.” This work was accepted for performance at the Big Range Dance Festival 2012 in Houston as a juried submission. The equipment funded with the grant will be used to support future collaborations of this type among faculty and TAMU students.