HARUSPEX

Conception & music : Sannety

Choregraphy : Louis-Clément da Costa

Dancers: 5 Tba

Destruction drill dance squad ready for a parade

PREAMBULE

With this project we aim to create a live set of electronic music and dance that blurs the lines between a concert, a performance piece, a ceremony, a technical exercise, or a club night. Is this ‘art’, or a dance demo team gone rogue ?

MUSIC

I have created a live set up in Max/MSP to generate and improvise with rhythmic patterns.The idea to create this particular software instrument came from my appreciation for, and study of Carnatic (South-Indian) music, explorations of Gamelan music and other (often non-Western) musics that live in a place where rhythm is approached with more sense of adventure than a 4/4 bar has to offer. Bands that have inspired my taste for different rhythms are Aka Moon, Magic Malik Orchestra and Octurn, with whom I had a close working relationship. The striking absence of (repetitive) rhythm in ‘experimental music’ that I also played, strengthened my wish to research rhythm and time even more.

In technical terms: This instrument (programmed by Johan van Kreij) allows you to intuitively create patterns and improvise with them without being bound to a rigid grid. Everystep in a sequence can be a different BPM, but different sequences can be linked in terms of sharing the same duration.Time can organically speed up and slow down, it can curve, compress, expand and those processes can be played with.

Max/MSP Instrument screencapture 1 © Sanne

MUSIC

Further improvising with these irregular rhythms is possible by using algorithmic processes that can additionally link different musical parameters to the temporal events; the patterns also manifest themselves in the use of velocity (volume), duration, filters, effects, number of repetitions etc. This allows for a deep exploration of polyrhythms that are beyond what the brain can process. The mind however is naturally disposed to make patterns out of everything (Patternicity / Pareidolia / Apophenia etc.) pushing that concept to the limit and possibly into the liminal. (see also: ritual)The sound world centres around percussion and voice sounds, and ranges from trap samplepacks downloaded from the internet to traditional music samples, to voice samples made from recordings I did with friends or handcrafted synthetic sounds. I consider this my suggestion for new traditional music. Patterns are transformed live by rule-based improvisation; each piece is like a dynamic system with its own set of algorithmic processes that explore a particular (musical) idea / concept. In response to my experiences with ‘experimental or ‘improvised’ music’, the purpose of these algorithms is to free myself from unconscious limitations by imposing conscious limitations of another kind (see also: ritual).

Max/MSP Instrument screencapture 2 © Sanne

DANCE

Music & dance follow the same concepts; they communicate using rhythmical phrases and together determine the direction of the piece; decisions taken by the dancers can be cues for music and vice versa. Dancers use the rules to construct their own phrases of movement with material from the vocabulary.

The vocabulary mixes signature elements from popular dance forms : afrodance, Chicago footwork, Hip-hop new style; urban styles I encounter in daily life, and also elements from traditional dance forms such as Saman dancing (highly pattern-oriented, traditional Indonesian dance). When the rhythms are not in 4/4 (and most often they are not) those familiar movements will need to be adapted or shaped differently to fit in the patterns. By zooming in on familiar details, reshaping and recontextualizing them, we make our own language. The dancers are a hybrid between a step dance squad, a fitness demo crew, indigenous people performing a ceremony, performance artists, a drill team.

Rick Owen’s fashion show

RITUAL

The marriage of music and dance by means of rhythmical patterns, governed by certain rules / a game element, immediately refers to traditional musics / rituals. This performance is an exploration of / suggestion for future traditional musics, including dance, garb, objects, libations.During rituals, every act is performed with the fullest commitment and deliberation, whether it’s moving a tea kettle or positioning oneself to face a certain direction. I would like to explore this type of concentrated moving/listening/responding and its possibilities, as well as the space of the shared experience between performers and audience. “Social practices, rituals and festive events are habitual activities that structure the lives of communities and groups and that are shared by and relevant to many of their members. They are significant because they reaffirm the identity of those who practise them as a group or a society and, whether performed in public or private, are closely linked to important events. Social, ritual and festive practices may help to mark the passing of the seasons, events in the agricultural calendar or the stages of a person’s life. They are closely linked to a community’s worldview and perception of its own history and memory. They vary from small gatherings to large-scale social celebrations and commemorations. Each of these sub-domains is vast but there is also a great deal of overlap between them.”

Source : unesco website

Saman dance - Indonesia

PERFORMANCE STRATEGIES / ROLE OF THE AUDIENCE

Incorporating sounds and movements from popular culture into another context alongside elements from other worlds that sometimes appear mutually exclusive, creates an area where I feel most at home. This performance is meant to be in the awkward middle of popular music’s demand for music to be entertaining and the art world that demands meaning to the extreme. I would like to question the hierarchy that defines these categories, to examine these implicit agreements, or just simply present them side by side or on top of each other, without feeling the need to comply to either. In the best-case scenario, the audience might not know, whether they are expected to dance or sit in silence, whether it’s ‘ok’ to leave, walk around, to participate or look on their phones or talk with friends, as this would invite them to create a new comfort zone on the spot or, even momentarily, reconsider or wonder about how they will respond. That makes this performance a good fit for a variety of places – black box, white box, clubs, gymnasiums, or whatever other (public) spaces where we’ll be allowed to play with people’s expectations.

BIOGRAPHIESANNETY

Additional resume: Until 2013 I worked as a trumpet player / composer, as a bandleader and as a freelancer with other musicians. I was in bands with / toured with / recorded with / played regularly with

Magic Malik, Gilbert Nouno, Aka Moon, Octurn, Dafne Vicente Sandoval, Rafael Vanoli, Guus Janssen, Onno Govaert, Shahzad Ismailey, Trevor Dunn, Xavier Lopez, Koenraad Ecker, the Ploctones, Benoît Delbecq, Alexandra Grimal, Jasper Stadhouders, David Kweksilber Bigband, Hilary Jeffery, Bram Stadhouders, Alain Platel / Les ballets C de la B, Raoul vd Weiden, Jozef Dumoulin, Harmen Fraanje, Teun Verbruggen, Eve Risser, Eirikur Olaffson, Carl Ludwig Hubsch, Clayton Thomas, Joachim Badenhorst, DJ Sniff etcetera

Some other highlights: Young Vips Tour 2009Carte Blanche Bimhuis 2012‘Improviser in Residence’ in Moers DE, 2009-2010 (yearlong residency, spin off of the Moers Festival)Played ZXZW festival, Muziekgebouw aan t IJ, North Sea Jazz Festival, AB Brussels, Vooruit

Sannety.com I’m an electronic musician, originally from Eindhoven. My work focusses on the exploration of rhythms. For this purpose, I created a software instrument to venture off grids and bend time, to create a panoply of polyrhythmic patterns. By playing games with temporal gestures and specific parameters, I build a world of percussive sounds inspired by genres that approach rhythm with more adventure than a 4/4 bar has to offer, as well as by the great beat makers of our time.

Gent, Follow the Sound Festival Antwerpen, Studio Loos, Triton Paris, Sunside/Sunset, Loft Köln, Stadtgarten, The Stone NYC, Center for New Music San Francisco, Ruhrtriennale, Jazz au Chellah Rabat, Moers Festival (2009, 2010) and many more places. Received commissions to write for European Saxophone Ensemble and to write for Ars Musica Festival in Mons, Belgium.Etc.

Studies: 2005 Manhattan School of Music (Masters Program trumpet)2001- 2004 Amsterdam Conservatory (Bachelors Degree trumpet)1996- 2000 Amsterdam Conservatory (bass guitar and double bass) Grants

• 2012 Muzieklab Brabant, grant to cover the musician fees and other costs involved in preparation, touring and recording, mixing, mastering of a cd under the moniker ‘Network of Stoppages’.• 2012 ‘Kunsten en Erfgoed’, Flemish Ministry of Culture, Belgium, grant for Network of Stoppages.• 2010 Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, grant, to study with Gilbert Nouno (IRCAM), electronic music and Claude Ledoux, composition, in Paris.• 2005 Nuffic ‘Talenten Beurs’, grant 2005 VSB Fonds, grantBoth of these were granted for the proposed curriculum for a year of studying in New York City, including studies at the Manhattan School of Music and private lessons. • 2013 and 2006 was granted a 3-year O-1 visa (artist visa) to the US.

BIOGRAPHIELouis-Clément da Costa

Dancer and choreographer Louis-Clément da Costa has worked with l’Opéra Ballet de Lyon for two years. There, he explored the works of Sasha Waltz, Maguy Marin, William Forsythe, Pierre Droulers and Tere O’Connor. He joined les Ballets C. de la B. et Alain Platel for Pitié ! and Boléro with Lisi Esteras. Living and working between Switzerland and Belgium, he is a regular collaborator with the companies of Gilles Jobin, Greffe de Cindy van Acker, Charleroi Danse (Pierre Droulers), and Peeping Tom as dancer, artistic assistant, sound and video. He assisted director Franck Chartier for the creation of ‘The Lost Room’ and ‘The Hidden Floor’ with Nederlands Dans Theater 1 and worked with Eszter Salamon for the project Lores & Praxes.

He organises ‘Speedbattles’ since 2011. A match of contemporary dance, inspired by hiphop battles and improv theatre. 2 teams of 4 dancers each, and musicians, face each other, using improvisational rules that are projected on a big screen. Since 2015, Louis-Clément is working with Requin Baleine. Together with Joel Cahen, he participates in Wetsounds. They are trained divers and create pieces in swimming pools and aquatic environments: the audience is in the water, equipped with masks and snorkels to watch the performance that unfolds underwater. The latest piece Axis Mundi (Création Théâtre du Galpon 2016) by the company Axis, was inspired by the astronomical observatory of Jaipur. Louis conceived of several chorographical systems that generate eclipses, based on simple mathematical structures.

Astronomical instrument- Jantar Mantar - Jaipur India

CONTACT

Artistic Direction - MusicSannety

sannety.com / sannetyclause@gmail.com

Marching Band Uniforms West-East

ChoregraphyLouis-Clément da Costa

Louisclementdacosta@gmail.com+33 6 52 19 77 22