Sound(e)scape: The Sound of Words

The third instalment of Sound(e)scape, the multidisciplinary concert series I produce, was at the China Cloud on August 16th, featuring spoken word and movement collaborations.

In addition to producing this show – I also happened to be performing in all 3 acts (is this becoming a habit of mine?).

I’m happy to report – even with all the pressure – at the end of the night I had a huge smile on my face.

The first act was a piece conceptualized by me and choreographed by Myola Paulter called Distortion/50/10/05. It was a piece exploring the relationship between self and ego.  In particular, we were exploring how distorted self image can get when the self and ego are struggling against eachother. The title represents 3 harrowing statistics – 50% of Americans have had or know someone who has had an eating disorder, 10% of people with Anorexia die from the illness within 10 years, and only 5% of American women have the body type portrayed in advertising/media.

Dancers Marilu Retana and Jennifer Aoki did a beautiful job, and as always I had a blast playing with Shanto Acharia.

The second act was the one I was super nervous about! Britt MacLeod and I co-wrote a triptych piece called Begin/End Me with spoken word, singing, looped harp, effects, and movement. There’s one part I beatbox into my soundboard and loop it to create a rhythm (read: butterflies in my stomach!) You can check out a clip of that here:

And the show was finished by a new project called Hildegard’s Ghost formed by Roisin Adams after she and the band won the Contemporary Composition Competition at VCC earlier this spring  Roisin wove her compositions with spoken word by Meaghan McAneely, joined by me on the harp and Ben Brown on the drums. It was so much fun to play someone else’s music (being a front woman can be exhausting!).

The show got a nice review on VanDocument’s website. Check it out here!