Stay

at Art SF, San Francisco, December 2005

at Movement Research’s About Town at Dance Theater Workshop, January 2006

Accustomed to the images portrayed in popular media (i.e. images of sex, drugs and partying), it seems impossible that a tourist is able to parse through the seemingly swampy mess that is South Florida. Inspired by my hometown, the city of Miami, localstwang is the result of the process of composing dance and music simultaneously. Using contact microphones connected to guitar effects pedals and amplifiers,
the dancers affect changes in the sound throughout the performance.

The live sound accompanies a prerecorded track composed of digitally manipulated vocal sounds. The dancer with the tentacle-like contact mic taped to her mouth (the native) makes sounds familiar to the environment while the other dancer (the tourist) walks through the cords, steps on the guitar effects pedals and distorts the native’s voice, thereby discouraging verbal communication. In addition to the contact mic taped to the native’s mouth, another contact mic lies on the floor and picks up sounds made by both dancers’ movements.

This piece toured through various venues in California and showed in New York venues such as Exit Art Gallery (La Superette Festival), Chashama (Movement Research Festival), and Dance Theater Workshop (Movement Research’s About Town Series).