American Creative Dance Brochure

In the work of American Creative Dance, the musicians are free to choose among all of the entire range of sounds that they can make. Any instrument, including the human voice, maybe especially the human voice, can produce percussive sounds, for instance. Instruments can also make a rich variety of non-traditional sounds that the musicians of this company are encouraged to use.

The musicians work with the dancers to develop a vocabulary of sounds to fit the movement. Just as the dancers can create a study in movement that is large, forceless, stopped, and downward, the musicians can follow that study. If the dancers are skillful and create clear movements, the musicians can make sound compositions that parallel or contrast with the dancers' choices..

While this would not have to be true in order for this system to work, it is a convention that the musicians of American Creative Dance avoid using music in recognized scales, preferring atonal composition in the tradition of contemporary classical music in the west.

Just as the dancers take great risks in this kind of work, so do the musicians. There is no printed score, there is no "right note," no one is telling them what choices to make. The musicians are out there in the moment making the choice as the work is performed.

The musicians also need and get the support the dancers do to be able to create in this way. We know how to tell them the truth. We know how to reflect to them what they are doing and what they have done.

Many musicians, indeed most performers have a history of having been shamed in their work by conductors and directors, coaches, and teachers, colleagues and fellow musicians. Perhaps when those persons are under pressure to perform, they act this out on others, blaming them for not producing the desired result. Shaming and criticism, sometimes hurtful, personal criticism, are so prevalent in the art world that hardly any professional artist has gone unscathed by it.

American Creative Dance does not use this kind of discourse. In fact, it would be very difficult for us to create the works of art we do if we were to do so. Our performers are on the edge of the cliff, creating right there on the stage in the performance. There is no score for them to rely on; they have to do it themselves. What we must have is support.

The music we make could not be replicated any other way. It is part of what draws our audience in. In fact, some of our audience members come more to hear the music than to see the dance. That is fine with us. We rejoice in it.