Kinesthetic artist Zara Lawler...gives a performance workshop on incorporating dance and story-telling into your playing.Zara and choreographer C. Neil Parsons performed Lowell Liebermann's Eight Pieces and led participants through some warm ups and exercises. Zara also combined storytelling with playing using Debussy's Syrinx, Varese's Density 25.1, and Hoover's Kokopeli. I went in thinking, "This could be interesting..." and left feeling energized about all sorts of possibilities.
I've also picked up a lot of good things from Zara's "The Practice Notebook," which is linked to the right. I'll be talking about those in future posts.
Those of you who know me know that I do contra dancing. In the past I played D whistle and flute from time to time with a Boston-based amateur band. Occasionally the Lavender Country & Folk Dancers Dance Camp offers opportunities to play for dancing, but if you're playing, you're not dancing.
Who knew you could dance and play at the same time?
This afternoon I decided to give it a try playing The Margravine's Waltz, which I can play from memory on both the whistle and the flute. First I worked with the whistle. If I got my feet going pretty well, I couldn't play the tune. If I kept the tune up, I messed up the steps. However did we manage to learn to march and play at the same time given who little time we spent on the field practicing in high school? (Since we weren't a competitive band, I suppose it didn't make a lot of difference, but still...) It was a little frustrating, so I didn't spend too much time at it today. Later in the afternoon, just before my daily practice, I tried it with the flute. For some reason, maybe because I'd already tried it with the whistle (or maybe not), it was much easier. I was even able to start waltzing rather than taking one step for each measure.
I was waltzing while fluting!
Maybe a couple of my ideas aren't so far fetched after all. I'll keep you posted.
Jeffri,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words about the performance/workshop. And way to go, giving it a try at home.
The phenomenon of suddenly forgetting how to play something when you add in the moves is part of the process of interdisciplinary work--it happens to everyone. I sometimes like to add movement to my scales and they always fall apart--and I've been doing T&G No 4 for 20 years now!
Sometimes I find it helps to be very very rote about it in the early stages: left foot when I play this B-flat, right on the C, Left on the D, etc. I often write in the steps above the music, to have a visual aid while learning. That stage only lasts a while, but it seems to help to "marry" the music to the movement.
Keep up the good work, and keep up keeping us posted!
-z
I wanna see you waltzing and fluting in your apartment.
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