Zeena Parkins &  BodyCartography
Score

Score We propose looking at scoring for improvisational structures for advanced movers and sound makers. We will exchange scores between movers and sound makers directed towards the possibility of development or invention of a language to communicate ideas, gestures, stories, sounds. This is not an open jam situation, but rather an investigation and focused research, to pursue directed actions and a dialogue between two media. Some scores and materials can equally apply to sound making and moving. Parkins and BodyCartography have investigated tone as an entry point to a working process, creating generative scores. BodyCartography unveiled surprising changes of physiological tone in the body as a generator of movement and Parkins creating psycho-acoustic phenomena, with frequencies experienced in different environments: resonating internally and in reaction to both organic and inorganic surfaces or qualities. Both explorations in turn created different affective tone on stage and in the empathetic space between audience and performers. We propose within each session, we will work on materials that cross between sound and movement but we would also like to spend time within disciplines, Zeena together with the musicians and BodyCartography with the dancers, allowing the focus to zoom in and out of one’s primary field in a fluid way. Our goal is to cross pollinate the information coming out of each practice, trying on each others scores and co-creating scores together. What does scoring look like?? Some scores are physiological (based in Body-Mind Centering), sonic, compositional, text based/picture based, temporal, vertical, determinant, textural, formal, generative, reductive, simple, impossible, heteromorphic, paradoxical. This Coaching Project creates a platform to invent and investigate. As a team we have collaborated on two performance projects in 2010, ½ Life and the Lyon Opera Ballet commission Mammal, and are beginning work on a third project in the summer of 2011 with a working title of Super Nature. The BodyCartography Project was founded in 1998 and is co-directed by dance and video artists Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. We investigate the relationship between the body and space in urban, domestic, wild and social landscapes through dance, performance, video, and installation, workshops and festivals. Our works range from intimate solos for the street or stage, to large community dance works in train stations, short experimental films in national parks, to complex works for site or stage amidst installations of video and sound in collaboration with scientists. In 2010 we created three new works. We collaborated with physicist Bryce Beverlin II and composer Zeena Parkins on ½ Life that addressed the impact of nuclear issues around the Pacific from a scientific, cultural and environmental perspective and manifest as an installation and performance. Symptom, a collaboration with visual artist Emmet Ramstad and composer Andrea Parkins, explored the gaps between seeing and knowing, inspired by the works of Dan Graham and Bruce Nauman. Mammal, a commission for Lyon Opera Ballet, explored the edge between nature and culture with Zeena Parkins and Emmett Ramstad. Zeena Parkins is a performing composer, improviser, sound artist and educator. Zeena’s ongoing work with dance and her longterm relationships with choreographers, has been a primary focus of her work as a creative sound maker. She has received 3 Bessie’s for work with Jennifer Monson, John Jasperse, DD Dorvillier and Neil Greenberg. She also has pioneered work on extending the language of the acoustic harp as well as inventing new electric harps in collaboration with instrument builders and sound artists, most recently with Douglas Henderson. Zeena has collaborated and toured with Bjork, Yoko Ono, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Elliott Sharp, Butch Morris, Thurston Moore, Lea Renaldo, Kim Gordon, among others. She has also worked extensively with filmmakers: Abigail Child, Daria Martin, Mandy McIntosh and Cynthia Madansky.