Percussion Theatre: a body in between

Jennifer Torrence

What does the musician become when sound and instrumental thinking are no longer privileged as the foundation of a musician's practice? In what ways does an emphasis on the musician's body cause music to approach art forms such as theatre and performance? After a generation of pioneering work from Mauricio Kagel, Dieter Schnebel, John Cage and many others, where is the theatrical and the performative in music today? How do its recent developments shape, alter, constitute a musician's artistic practice? Through her research, Jennifer Torrence argues that this type of music demands the musician assume a different understanding and relation to their instrument and therefore a different relation to their body. This relation calls for new ways of making and doing (new artistic practices) that foreground the body as a fundamental performance material. Through an emphasis on the body, the musician emerges as a performer. This exposition is a reflection on the research project Percussion Theatre: a body in between. This project is comprised of a collection of new evening-length works that approach the theatrical and performative in contemporary music performance. These works are created with and by composers Wojtek Blecharz, Carolyn Chen, Neo Hülcker, Johan Jutterström, Trond Reinholdtsen, François Sarhan, and Peter Swendsen. The exposition contains reflections on recent developments in contemporary music that mark a mutation of the executing musician into a co-creating performer, as well as images, artefacts, videos, and texts that unfold the process of creating and performing the work that constitutes this project. The ambition of this exposition is that through the exposure of a personal artistic practice an image of a larger field may come into focus.

Etudes to become a deer (2017)

by Neo Hülcker in collaboration with Jennifer Torrence

Etudes to become a deer (2017) 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 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 deer ears with a wondrous array of hushed sounds.

Support from the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme and the Norwegian Academy of Music.

Duration: 25 minutes

A brief description of the collaborative process

Etudes to become a deer was created in a highly collaborative process whereby movement, sound, and video materials were created collectively through improvisation, gameplay, and work with the video camera. This would be the second piece that would call for the composer to perform alongside Torrence, a natural result of the collaborative generative process. After the development of the materials, Hülcker created a structure for the piece in the form of a musical score. The score is notated with graphic notation and text instructions.

Performance History:

21 September 2017: Holdeplass produced by Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo Norway

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