FLOODESIGN

PT: Absolutely. If the "Goldberg Variations" is the piano, we have to put it in the center. If it fails, it will be a good failure. It's really challenging compositionally to make this not always look like it's going around the piano in a circle. It's amazing that we have this two-week residency in July at Montclair, so we can really figure this out, instead of having two days in the theater and rushing. LVJ: When I watched rehearsal footage from your residency at MANCC [the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography] at Florida State University, it became clear that there were things that were surprising to you both in the ways that you work — SD: Yeah, I was very surprised about the lack of counting. [laughs] I liked very much that things weren't exact because I also play with a freer sense of rhythm. I was also surprised by the dancers, how they interacted; Pam always was really open to hearing their ideas. There was almost an element of improvisation that develops into the choreography. PT: It's based on the vocabulary that's already in place; within that vocabulary dancers are making their own choices sometimes. SD: This is only my second experience working with dancers. The first was with the Paris Opera Ballet — PT: It's safe to say that we're totally opposite. LVJ: The lack of counting, the freedom to be continually changing the parameters around what exactly the work is, the dancers' role as collaborators — those are all strong tenets of postmodernism. For me, these tenets have the possibility to create more positive human interactions and foster deeper connections between the players inside of a work. I'm thinking of a particular humanist politic versus a more traditional, dictatorial setup where there's the leader who tells people what to do. I think postmodernism can often be interpreted as being other, and formal, and difficult for audiences. But I actually see it as way more democratic. I think collaboration itself is a feminist practice. I don't know whether you'd call it downtown dance or more experimental contemporary dance, but it's a woman-dominated field in terms of the people who are practitioners. A lot of these progressive ethics and politics are embedded inside of their work, in ways that don't get talked about. PT: Most definitely. SD: And the thing about live music, of course, is that it's never the same. PT: Dancing's never the same, either. Even though the dancers have the same steps, they never execute them the same. SD: But if you're using recorded music, the tempo has to be the same. And with us, it's open. It could very well be that the dancers will be in a different spot at a different time than they were the previous day. LVJ: Like, a really different spot? PT: It depends on which variation. There are rules, internally, but it's also loose, which is what gives breath and life to it. SD: It's generally the same, but I will take time in different places. I had an experience of playing the Robbins ballet, and I was not allowed by the directors to do that at all. They wanted me to play it exactly the same way each night. I didn't actually follow that so much. LVJ: Do you find in this case, Simone, that you can even watch and wait with what the dancers are doing, and really respond? SD: Yes, I do that. PT: Simone's very much a part of the dance. The more I talked to the lighting designer, Davison Scandrett, who's been my collaborator for a while, the more we saw that the design all comes from the piano. The piano is the design element. SD: The lid is a big problem, in terms of being able to see. So in the end we thought, OK, we'll take the lid off altogether. Which is something that never happens in concerts because acoustically, then, the sound is going directly up into the air as opposed to pushing out toward the audience. However, visually it's much better. And you know what? This has started affecting me playing in traditional concerts. I'm starting to experiment with taking the lid off, so I can see the orchestra. PT: Love it. LVJ: The piano is in the center, not off to the side, and not down here [in the orchestra pit], and the dancers create a circle around it — so there are all these things that are nontraditional, or atypical ways of looking at this relationship between you. www.peakperfs.org 23

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