WHAT'S NEXT

...

Wednesday 20 February 2008

Music's nice and all that but the reason of being of Small But Perfectly Formed is to help collaborations and not only concerts to happen.
I wanted to do meetings with dancers for a while. I had a chat with Olivier Toutlemonde (http://olivier.toulemonde.free.fr/) two years ago about a project he's got called Et/Ou where dance, film and music meet. Nice and easy! Take all the live performance types I know about and put them in a room to see what they can share and exchange. Chisenhale Dance Space offered the project a certain amount of studio hours to develop the idea.
The results will be presented in a very short improvisation on Friday the 7th of March.
It'll involve Guillaume Viltard, Samantha Rebello and Robert Anderson.

I'm curious to know if there'll be anybody from the music scene attending.

Laters,

o

4 comments:

nico said...

Hey buddy!

Nice blog you've got there.
All the posts i can see are advertising good stuff.
Great stuff, even.
Keep 'em coming, man...

However i think collaboration is way overrated. Who needs to work with one another anyway? What can togetherness and unity achieve? I mean, are you a commie or what? If this is another political blog then just say so...

I used to play in a band called No Cooperation, then we changed the name to No Collaboration but as it was still pretty shite, we changed it again to No Can Do, which sounds cool i think.
Then we split up.

Thats the spirit, man.

Long live smbpfblgspt.cm!
Death to vowels.

Anonymous said...

Re: Collaboration. Couldn't agree more. Collaboration is way overrated and people banging on about it has rendered the term meaningless.

Anyway when you're putting on great events, why do you need to make them sound deep and all important?

Chrys

Anonymous said...

maybe to try to render the term collaboration meaningful...

My intention was to present what is done not to boast. I can only be disappointed it comes across like that.

o

nico said...

Hey,

It didnt strike me that the events are generally presented as deep and important. Quite the contrary actually.

As for collaboration its a tricky (but interesting) one. Its true that the term has become hackneyed and meaningless. Does it mean we should leave it (to conceptual and reactionary avant-garde artists..?) and stop using it? Mhh... maybe. But I can understand that people are still trying to question it and engage with it, to try and give it back some sense and (street..?) credibility.

It may all sound like its just grammar or words anyway but how many performances involving dance and/or film with music are just lame and have been mostly about trying to impress an audience by gathering randomly as many performers as possible? You know, as in trying to be cool by involving videos (VJs?) or putting up a big inter-disciplinary show (total theatre?) or something.

Theres nothing wrong with trying to think about how different media and different means of expressions can interact with each other.
If they can at all...
And with trying to put that into practice.

Now, one may argue that collaboration happens on many levels whether we want (realize?) it or not; that each individual sees it or receives it their own way; that maybe the less we try to make it happen the more likely it is to be happening, in a spontaneous way or something.
This may well be true.

With a former band (nocando), we argued that our different musical backgrounds were what united us and made our music interesting. If at all... Collaboration seen as the juxtaposition of different elements. Or something... Not that we attached any real importance to it but it can still be interesting to see what works and what doesn't and why you think that is (or...eeer, isn't?)

In that respect I find the CD released by Michel Henritzi interesting. By putting together on two different channels two tracks recorded by two musicians that do not know what the other track sounds like, he questions the idea of collaboration as recorded material.

Anyway. I guess my point is to say that at the end of the day (as any good footballer would say), theres nothing wrong with questioning the idea of collaboration and its putting into practice.
Which seems to be the main argument of this blog.