Written for The Dance Current in Toronto, Ontario (July 1999).

In early June 1999 I met with three Toronto composers who have written extensively, and in one case exclusively, for the medium of dance. The approach to my discussions with them was not to draw up a biographical portrait, but to have them relate their experiences with dance in a general sense according to issues of aesthetics and the creative process.

The three composers are Ann Southam, John Oswald, and Catherine Thompson. Each one has a different approach to composition and to the process of writing for dance. Because of this fact it is difficult to synthesize my discussions with all of them into one coherent body of prose. Therefore, I will discuss each one separately and allow biography to seep in where it seems appropriate.

Although all three composers are all still active in writing for dance, they in effect represent different periods in Canadian dance history. Anne Southam goes back the farthest with her collaborations with Toronto Dance Theatre in the early seventies. John Oswald played a significant part in the burgeoning freelance scene of the eighties, while Catherine Thompson is emerging with the most recent generation of dance artists on the scene today.

Their distinct approaches will become apparent as we explore their perspectives on the process of writing music for dance.

When Ann Southam began writing for dance in the early seventies she was given the latitude to explore electronic music at an early stage in its infancy. The marriage of electronic music with dance scoring was liberating. It proved to be a magical and invigorating combination as virtually all of Ann's music for dance is electronic. Incidentally, all of her music for the concert hall is strictly instrumental or vocal. This division in her compositional repertoire is itself worthy of further investigation by musicologists and dance historians. Nonetheless, what is it that makes the combination so complimentary in her case?

Ann noted her fascination with the physical movement of playing and this being an impetus behind the music she writes for the concert hall. She finds dance performances with live musical accompaniment to be distracting. Her eyes can not disregard the activity of musical performance itself. Even with recorded music, she finds her listening imagination trailing into a fictional dance of down-bows and dancing elbows. However, with electronic music the physical presence is removed altogether. The dance audience is enveloped in an alien universe devoid of physical and even cultural associations that are not always relevant to the performance created onstage by the choreographer. Therefore the viewer's imagination can respond without hindrance to the physical and emotional energies emanating from the dance floor.

Added to the magical fusion was the sheer novelty of making music in the early electronic music studios at the University of Toronto and Royal Conservatory of Music. Ann said, "It was like I had died and gone to heaven." Here she was being paid to explore an utterly new musical medium in collaboration with artists who were just as open and fascinated with the medium as she was. Traditional musical tastes and preconceptions were held somewhat at bay, which made it possible to regard the music as an interdependent component of the dance experience.

Ann thought of her scores as leaving room for another player who was present but not necessarily making sound. This is what makes this music appropriate for dance rather than the concert hall, and is a point taken up later by John Oswald. Ann echoed other statements by John in agreeing that the playback volume on the sound system should be proportional to the human presence of the live performers, and to paraphrase her words, not to fill the space with sound in a way that negates the presence of the space itself. With these statements on the integration of sound with dance, I will move on to John Oswald who has some fascinating views on the subject.

The marriage of music and movement in John Oswald's case is one where the choreographer and composer, as he put it in our conversation, "take turns upstaging one another." This is to say that the music and dance take turns at being the primary source of interest, while at other times come together in conflict or in harmony. The process of collaboration becomes one of composing a clear dialogue, navigating the various forms of interrelationship represented by these examples and many others. However, integration is a principle that can only be achieved through close creative communication where the effect of each collaborator's work on the other is clearly understood and carefully weighed.

John Oswald explained to me that collaborations with a strong integration of music and movement are best fulfilled when the collaborators maintain two-way dialogue about each other's area of concern. Therefore, choreographers should feel free to comment on the music or its realization, and composers should have room to comment about the dance or other aspects of staging. With this sort of dialogue both parties can achieve a better understanding of what either the choreography or music is doing separately and in tandem. Not engaging in this dialogue can enslave one to a long chain of command where trust is built only on ignorance. Of course, in many cases ignorance and even creative misunderstanding are a convenient basis for integration, and occur more frequently than artists will readily admit. John insists, however, that this two-way dialogue is a condition for collaboration. Without it the process for him is frustrating and unfulfilling.

The character of his music for dance is defined by this sense of integration. He states, "one can not lump all of my music for dance together, because each piece is a whole new ballpark." One could interpret that to mean the issues of collaboration dictate the content of his music. However, I've observed certain general tendencies at play in his music for dance. On Discosphere, his CD compilation of dance scores, it is interesting to note stylistic tendencies that recur with different choreographers. Thus, the music written for Holly Small is quite distinct from that written for Bill Coleman, as both explore very different worlds of sound and means of communication. Perhaps then it is the choreographer who lays out the playing field and associated ground rules on which the music is based.

In our conversation he explained that certain sounds and methods of orchestration are a better complement to the presence of a dancer on stage, such as the human voice or sounds amplified within range of the human voice without artificial reverberation. Complementing the performer on stage also implies leaving room for the dance in the music as if it was another contrapuntal line in its construction. The musicality in this context is part of a coordinated multi-faceted experience where one element need not do all of the work on its own.

Catherine Thompson has addressed the issue of musical integration differently than the other two composers. In contrast to Ann Southam she embraces the physical presence of the live musician as a point of focus for musical integration. Catherine is one of those composers who views composition and live performance in virtually synonymous terms, which is indicative perhaps of her background in Celtic and other traditional folk music. Thus, the presence of Catherine on stage is a carefully conceived element of the dance presentation. It is not a point of distraction, as Ann Southam warns, but rather a prepared element of the dance itself as it unfolds in front of the audience.

The process of conceiving the music in this case is influenced directly by the rehearsal process in the dance studio. This process can yield an organic synergy of ideas that may remain dormant when the music and dance are created in relative isolation. For Catherine this is a ripe environment for creation as she noted that she responds to the dance in much the same way as she approaches music, more from an intuitive place than a theoretical one.

There is the potential in Catherine's case to conceive of music that is motivated by the physical enjoyment of movement. Catherine became interested in contemporary dance in her youth. Her mother was the production manager of Toronto Dance Theatre back in the early days, and incidentally, was good friends with Ann Southam. Later, Catherine took dance classes again as an adult and from this sprung her first dance collaborations. Her early exposure to dance and her continued interest mark a distinct difference from most composers writing for the medium who do so with no direct experience with dance and little knowledge of dance aesthetics or theory. With her background she possesses the potential to explore work where musical and physical gestures live on a shared plane of experience.

The next time I sit down in my seat at a dance performance, a number of issues will run through my mind about the integration of music and dance. The cultural associations implied in the choice of instrumentation and musical vocabulary, the interrelationship evident in the music and dance dialogue, and also the choice in the presentation of the music may all have an impact on the dance.

Over-riding everything however, are some basic values for aesthetic quality, which apply to both choreographer and composer alike: clarity of form; originality of invention; relevancy and truthfulness of content. In fact, what needs to be assessed in these cases is how the choreographer and composer use the work in question to come to an agreement about these basic artistic principles. For that, I open the door for a choreographer to respond to this article with a discussion from his or her own perspective.

Footnotes