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Choreomusical Encounters: Performative Approaches to Understanding Corporeal Expressivity in Music
Current debate surrounding the expressive role of musicians’ body movements in Western art music performance has prompted a rapid expansion in research methodologies that attempt to qualify the relationship between sound and movement. In an age where a musician's physical gestures have been brought under close scrutiny, it is thus necessary to ask what function such expressive gestures bring to the live event of performance and whether such elements might be employed to spurn new creative departures in interdisciplinary practice.
This discussion explores a range of performance-based research methodologies for the cross-fertilization of recent studies in instrumental gesture and their application within visual and choreographic practices. Drawing upon a number of examples from my own practice-led research, I offer an alternative modality for re-comprehending the musical body that resists generalized or fixed interpretations. The talk begins with an overview of current research into the expressive role of instrumental gestures and expands to illustrate how such approaches might be interwoven with gesture-based research methodologies within postmodern dance practices. This cross-application of approaches, I argue, paves the way for a new kind of choreomusical research. This kind of research may help to open up original insights into the phenomenological and crucially kinesthetic interaction between spectator, performer and instrument, leading to new possibilities for creative practice. It is my hope that such work may help to reinstate the physical presence of the musician’s body as an intrinsic and indispensable aspect of live performance.
Biography: Dr Imogene Newland is a British interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, director and creator of experimental performance. Originally trained as a pianist specialising in contemporary repertoire, Imogene became interested in the overlap between choreographic practices and gestural analysis in music performance in 2003. She has subsequently formed a series of practice-led works that address the intimate and intensely physical relation between music and the body. She has presented her original performance works at, amongst others, the Arnolfini, Bristol, the Klankkleur Festival, Amsterdam and Ars Electronica, Linz. Imogene completed her practice-led Ph.D. at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast in 2011. Imogene has since written for a number of academic journals including Activate and Somatechnics as well as co-authoring a book chapter for Sandra Reeve’s Ways of Seeing a Body: Body and Performance (2013) with saxophonist Franziska Schroeder. She is currently sub-editor for the journal Body, Space and Technology and Associate Editor of Performing Arts for HARTS & Minds.
- Speaker
- Dr Imogene Newland
- Hosted by
- Department of Music, School of Education
- Venue
- MacRobert Building
- Contact
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Stephanie Hunstone
University of Aberdeen
MacRobert Building
Aberdeen AB24 5UA
Telephone: +44 (0)1224 274779
Email: stephanie.hunstone@abdn.ac.uk