Music•Noise•Art

Not Dead Yet is the title of a new Butoh dance/music improvisation piece Christina Braun and I cooked up and performed this past Nov 2 – Day of the Dead – at Balancing Perspectives, an art party thrown by JFK University and The Asian Art Museum. At left is a blurry backstage shot taken just before the performance.

The piece starts in silence as my character, awash in spooky dry-ice fog (and attendant bubbling cauldron sound), is awakened by C’s character, rises, discovers a guitar and starts to play it, rediscovering sound as C dances in improvisation with the sound.

It had been our intention for the music to be amplified, but it soon became apparent that the power to all the guitar gear was dead, so it was ‘on with the show’ and acoustic improvisation instead (using a halloween orange Gretsch 6120 hollow body).

This proved to be a fortuitous twist of fate as the room boasted excellent acoustics and irony was not lost on the audience. After a few minutes of static movement and subtle tension, power was restored and electrified sound filled the room allowing us to get dark and scary. The piece moved on to a dramatic peak and culminated in the characters joining together, leaving the temporary paradise of improvisation and returning to the special place where all the spirits come from and all the spirits return.