Mark Tompkins & Maxime Dupuis
Audible Movement, Visible Sound

Audible Movement, Visible Sound

Real time composition for professional dancers and musicians

The practice of real time composition is fundamentally the same for dancers and musicians. The major difference lies in the use of the body – the instrument – and the motivation to act. For a dancer, the body is the instrument and the primary motivation is to create movement, to be seen. For a musician, the body in its relationship to an object is the instrument and the primary motivation is to create sound, to be heard. Investigating our respective points of view, we play in the zones of crossover and contamination.

Mark Tompkins
When improvising, each performer is working simultaneously on many different levels of sensation and perception: listening, watching, sensing, acting, reacting to one's self and one's partners. The art of real time composition resides in the ability to remain open to the wealth of internal and external impulses, and to receive, process and propose material in an uninterrupted flow of feedback. How to avoid overload, how to stay actively attentive, how to do nothing and still act? These questions are explored through simple games and scores that play with the notions of shift, letting go, active/passive, centre/support and the roles of performer, witness and spectator.

Maxime Dupuis
How to enrich your personal language by sharing and confronting your vocabulary with others? How do the two artistic universes influence, interact, contaminate each other and create a singular language? Using the notions of geometry and space, rhythmic tools (like the elementary unity), imitation and counterpoint, we will look for visual and sound autonomy of the performers in an improvised context. Exploring the visual potential of music and the sound potential of movement by practising the tools of Elementary unity and rhythm, as well as emptiness and silence. Bring your bodies, your instruments and your voices and any object interesting for sound making.

Mark Tompkins and Maxime Dupuis collaborate since 2012 in the performance collective FIRE! – an ensemble of musicians and dancers in which everyone dances and plays music.