Rethinking the Performer: Towards a Devising Performance Practice

Jennifer Torrence

The performer’s perspective and the impact of collaboration on the performer’s artistic practice is often overlooked in frameworks designed to analyze collaboration in contemporary music. The conception of what a performer is ‘for’ in the development of a new musical piece is, at least in part, what constitutes a performer’s artistic practice, whether that is the performer as an interpreter and executor of scores, as an adviser to the composer, and/or as a co-creating deviser. The interpreter-adviser-deviser model is conceived as a framework for considering the ways composer-performer collaborations can influence and contribute to the construction of a performer’s artistic practice and subjectivity. Collaboration is not only a method of creating new works, it's also a method for creating artistic practices. Drawing on examples of devised practices as exhibited in Jennifer Torrence’s artistic research, practices which are communicated through reflections, dialogues, images, and videos, the article ultimately argues that it is the performer as deviser that offers the most radical rethinking of the purpose, role, and potential of the performer in contemporary music collaboration.

Collaborators & Contributors

Cited Compositions

etudes to become a deer

How to Fight

Institute for Post-Human Performance Practice

No Say No Way

What Noises Remain

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The research in this article is funded by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, Arts Council Norway, Norwegian Academy of Music, Music Norway, Oberlin College & Conservatory, the city of Berlin, and Künstlerhof Schreyah.

The author is indebted to Jessica Aszodi, Darla Crispin, Henrik Hellstenius, Einar Nielsen, and Elizabeth Peacocke for their guidance, and to Carolyn Chen, Neo Hülcker, Trond Reinholdtsen, François Sarhan, and Peter Swendsen for their contributions and permission for use of materials.

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