'Ears & Feet'
Utilizing technology to combine dance and computerized music has come a long way since the Eighties, as can be seen in the 2003 edition of EARS & Feet, the annual UT College of Fine Arts program that pairs student composers with student choreographers to collaborate on a piece.
By Sarah Hepola, Fri., May 2, 2003
Remember that scene from Big in which Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia hop up and down on a giant keyboard playing "Night and Day"? The scene was so charming, magic almost -- in doing a little dance, they made a little music. Well, just like Tom Hanks, technology has come a long way since the Eighties. You can do much better than a giant keyboard to combine dance and computerized music -- like, say, a floor pad and a copy of Dance Dance Revolution. Or, for the more sophisticated, consider this:
In one piece in this year's EARS & Feet production at UT, every dance move triggers a different computerized musical sound. The sound could be anything -- a note, a chord, a toilet flush -- but it is triggered by the dancer, his place on the stage, the swiftness of her step. That's because a video camera feeds information to the computer about the dancer's placement. If a dancer ends up in a different spot, the audience hears a different sound. One long-standing complaint about programmed music has been its predictability; it lacks the tension, the "what-if," of a live performance. But here, the computerized music contains an element of the unknown. And that keeps the dancers -- ahem -- on their toes.
"It's an interactive musical piece that involves video tracking," explains Russell Pinkston, the expert on these things. Using Max/MSP software, Pinkston says, "You can program this computer to do anything you want. You can turn lights on and off. You can probably start your microwave if you wanted to. Of course, we won't be doing those things. We'll be using it to generate sounds."
Pinkston is a professor in the UT School of Music who 20 years ago founded EARS -- the Electro-Acoustic Recital Series. When Pinkston wanted to add a visual component to the program a decade back, he partnered with the university's dance department, thus making EARS & Feet. The program pairs student composers with student choreographers to collaborate on a piece, no longer than 10 minutes, which is then performed in an annual recital. "It gives these young composers and young choreographers a way to find a language in different media," says Kent De Spain, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance, who is working with Pinkston on EARS & Feet. "Typically student choreographers find prerecorded music. And for student composers, music composition can be a lonely form, but here, these composers are suddenly faced with a roomful of dancers."
The 10 pieces in this year's recital run the gamut of form and style, from a piece using a live cello to one arising from a shared anti-war sentiment to one in which dancers dangle from hammocks. Pinkston also promises to literally surround the audience with sound. "Speakers over the stage, in the side balconies, in the four corners of the hall," he says. "Part of the fun in a performance like this is where the sound is coming from." Which means it's important where you sit -- and that you get seated. The show is free and (perhaps not coincidentally) quite popular.