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.

Etudes to become a deer (2017)

Composed by Neo Hülcker in collaboration with Jennifer Torrence

Etudes to become a deer is a multi-media piece for two performers,

video, and objects that traces the transformation of humans into deer.

Unfolding in five distinct etudes, Etudes to become a deer begins with two performers imitating deer movements: nervous twitches, energetic jumps, and fixated stares, all while fully dressed as these majestic creatures, antlers, ears, and all.

The second etude is an extended collage of deer images displaying human- kind's complex entanglement and fascination with deer: humans dressed as deer, hunting deer, worshiping deer, eating deer, and even falling in love with deer.

The third etude takes place in a German deer call competition. The two performers pair with a projected video of a recent competition, snorting and bellowing into their deer calls, and imitating every movement and sound of the human competitors.

The fourth etude is a melodic reverie of deer call performance featuring a rendition of "Dein Blaues Auge" by Johannes Brahms.

The final etude is deer-ASMR. This etude features dozens of deer figurines found in a dream-like mossy scene. Performing sound with leaves, sticks, carrots, and nuts, the performers tickle the tiny deers’ ears with a wondrous array of hushed sounds.

Funding and support provided by

Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, the Norwegian Academy of Music, the city of Berlin (Cité des Arts and Recherchestipendium E-Musik und Klangkunst), and Niedersächschische Stipendiatenstätte Künstlerhof Schreyahn.

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