Amy Chatelaine

The Making of Sun Dogs: Creating Conditions for the Spectacular // Daniel Wohl x Kate Nordstrum /  by Amy Chatelaine

Top (L to R): Daniel Wohl, Arooj Aftab, Josephine Decker, Devonté Hynes; Bottom (L to R): Mati Diop, Manon Lutanie, Rafiq Bhatia, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

In the Northern Hemisphere, we sense the departure of autumn through familiar cues: daylight wanes, the ground hardens, the temperature drops as bodies curl inward, creating a protective shell around our heartspace. Breath shallows. But the coming winter months hold within them a promise of possibility, chance moments when the gaze may lift with the draw of a spectacle. The chest, in turn, expands — allowing breath to enter new spaces, create new openings. 

Your world breaks free from its norm for a moment, is how Liquid Music Artistic Director Kate Nordstrum describes the human effect of beholding the natural phenomenon known as a sun dog.

And it’s that kind of breaking free — that breaking open, that inbreaking — that you’re likely to experience in the final performance of Liquid Music’s fall season.

Yet Sun Dogs is far more about a way of making — one that hopes to inspire within the shared realms of image and sound, and across a landscape where so much can feel broken. This singular project pairs artists across the distinct languages of filmmaking and music composition as storytellers on equal-footing, from inception to performance:

Rafiq Bhatia (composer) + Apichatpong Weerasethakul (filmmaker)
Devonté Hynes (composer) + Mati Diop & Manon Lutanie (co-filmmakers)
Arooj Aftab & Daniel Wohl (co-composers) + Josephine Decker (filmmaker)

This November, Sun Dogs will tour across continental America with live accompaniment by the “unusually versatile, reliably exhilarating new-music ensemble" (The New York Times) Alarm Will Sound. You can trace their path through Saint Charles, MO, (The Emerson Black Box Theater), Brooklyn (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Minneapolis (Northrop), and Los Angeles (Center for the Art of Performance UCLA). 

I spoke with Kate Nordstrum and composer Daniel Wohl ahead of the tour, drawn in by a shared enchantment, sent onward with a radiant question: What lasting gifts might this natural spectacle imprint on our ways of creating and being, through something as equally ethereal and atmospheric as music — as spectacular as light captured on film?

Image: Andrea Hyde

This interview took place on October 28, 2024, and has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Amy Chatelaine: I’d love to hear more about the title Sun Dogs. What’s evocative about that image as it relates to the concept for this project?

Kate Nordstrum: In the natural world, there are these special moments when elements combine in unique ways, and they offer a momentary spectacle. I spot a sun dog once or twice a winter, here in the North. And it's always a reminder to me that known quantities — like how I see the sun and its light — can shift and offer me another perspective. The collaborations within the program are similarly meant to offer small spectacles and new ways of seeing and sensing.

“For me, a sun dog feels like a portal ... It reminds me that it is possible for the world to break free from its norm for a moment.”
— Kate Nordstrum

For me, a sun dog feels like a portal: I always see the sun in this one particular way, but a couple times a year, I'll see it differently. It reminds me that it is possible for the world to break free from its norm for a moment. It triggers a reminder that I think is special. 

We're seeking to break open the norm here with this project, too. By effective element combinations and new ways of working.

Chatelaine: That's gorgeous. 

How did the two of you come together around this project?

Daniel Wohl: Kate and I had done some multimedia work together back in 2017, and we continued in conversation over the years.

Nordstrum: Daniel regularly expressed a desire for new systems or approaches for composers and filmmakers to work together. I heard that from other artists, too. That activated my producer-mind. I thought, How could we build a platform that could assist here, and see what results? 

We feel very fortunate that the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra took this on as a big investment, because it’s not just the commissions; it's the production budget necessary to make a short film. The CSO partnered with FotoFocus, a lens-based organization, to make it happen. 

Chatelaine: Daniel, I'd be interested to hear from you what this project and its shift in approach has offered you. What has it made more possible?

Wohl: My experience has mostly been in blending music with visuals in multimedia projects, where either filmmakers or video artists are responding to my work, or I'm composing for a film, TV show, or documentary and responding to what’s already created. I've also worked on music for dance and choreography, where the process is much more collaborative, building a project from the ground up. I was curious to see if something similar could happen with film, and that’s really where the project began — a curiosity and a sense that something was missing in the usual filmmaker-composer dynamic. It turned out others were also interested in exploring that more collaborative approach.

Chatelaine: How do you begin that creative conversation, when one is coming from the language of sound and the other from the language of visuals? What’s Day 1 like? 

Wohl: I can't speak for how it was for Dev or Rafiq, but for Arooj and me, it was a bit awkward at first because there’s no real blueprint for this kind of thing. Film scores often don’t make sense on their own since they're designed to respond to visuals. Arooj and I had to create something musically coherent, while Josephine had to bring that coherence visually and narratively. So, there were a lot of phone calls between Arooj, Josephine, and me as we brainstormed how those two elements would come together. The first musical ideas were Arooj’s vocals and some violin playing that we sent over just to spark ideas, which in turn evoked certain images for Josephine. It was a very intuitive process but also one that required a lot of early conversations, with us working separately for a while and then coming back together with more developed ideas.

“The project began [with] a curiosity and a sense that something was missing in the usual filmmaker-composer dynamic. It turned out others were also interested in exploring that more collaborative approach.”
— Daniel Wohl

Nordstrum: And what I like is that none of the pairs started with a story in mind. They came together because they wanted to work together; that was the impetus. And from that intention, they had to think about what they wanted to say, and decide how to start working together without the story given. They all ended up with pieces that they wouldn't have made without the other. And that's pretty special.

Chatelaine: This year, the films will feature live accompaniment from the New York-based ensemble Alarm Will Sound. Could you share a little bit about the group — their approach, and what appealed to you about partnering with them? 

Nordstrum: We've both worked with them before separately. They're great — always open to ideas. We premiered Sun Dogs with the Cincinnati Symphony — an 80 piece orchestra — and we knew that in order for this piece to have legs, we needed to scale down. Alarm was eager to collaborate, and to continue a series along these lines together. 

Alarm Will Sound | Photo: Thomas Fichter

Wohl: Yeah, I think they're one of the best chamber orchestras out there. It’s a 16-player group with really versatile instrumentation. They’re also very open to non-traditional projects and sounds, with a lot of experience working with composers who aren’t strictly from the contemporary classical world. So far, everything has been really seamless.

Nordstrum: They want to partner beyond just playing the piece; they’ve connected with the composers on their newly arranged works, and they’re finding residency support to develop this further together. Daniel and Rafiq are working with them as co-creators for some sort of program overture. They’re also involved in a new work that Daniel is premiering in Minneapolis with Northrop’s in-house organ, a special feature of the space.

Chatelaine: Is there anything you’d like the audience to know about that piece before the performance, Daniel? 

Wohl: Yeah. This piece was created specifically for this iteration of Sun Dogs, and it includes Arooj’s vocals and some harmonies from the piece we did together. I’m taking elements from that piece and reimagining them for pipe organ, electronics, and vocals. In a way, it serves as an overture for the whole night. I thought it was cool how, in silent film, the live organ was the central soundtrack before music became integrated directly with the visuals. So, using the organ as an overture here felt like a nod to a new way of composing for film and orchestra — not exactly an homage, but definitely inspired by that idea of setting the scene for a kind of spectacle.

The organ really was the original 'fake orchestra': with all its pipes —flutes, strings, and other timbres— it could do everything. When an orchestra wasn’t an option, you had the organ, and it brings with it that whole history of church music. The piece has this kind of ethereal feel, and to me, the organ naturally brings out that spiritual quality — maybe even a sense of the ‘sun dog’ realm, in a way.

Chatelaine: Are there particular moments from the process, for either of you, that give testament to what becomes possible in this approach? Did any creative challenges arise that you found particularly worthwhile to navigate? 

Nordstrum: Well, it's such a personal process. There were some key moments of healthy friction between first-time collaborations. 

When you've committed to working together as equals, no one automatically has the final word — that had to be negotiated. This project called for co-directorship.  

Wohl: One thing that struck me, along with a lot of the composers and filmmakers, is how thematically related the three films were, unintentionally. The commonalities across the three were both interesting and completely unconscious. 

Nordstrum: Yeah, no one knew what the others were working on. Each pair was doing their own thing, on the same time horizon. The CSO premiere was the first time the group experienced the pieces back-to-back. There were overlapping threads and reflections, kind of echoes of the films across the three. It’s fascinating.

Wohl: It was also amazing what we were able to do in Cincinnati — running it six times or so, which is almost unheard of in an orchestra setting. That process really allowed us to refine things. Even though this iteration is different, it’s evolved from that initial groundwork. It was really lucky to have Kate and Nate Bachhuber (who was the CSO director then) put that process together.

After hearing it, Arooj was like, I really want to work with orchestras more, and it sparked her interest in adapting her work for that medium. I think it also opened some eyes for composers who usually come from a band background, showing them what’s possible in an orchestral setting.

Chatelaine: All the artists involved are exceptional in their fields — and I’m also appreciating the amount of risk and vulnerability asked of them to take on this new way of working. 

I'm thinking, too, of our audience members, who may resonate with some of the creative challenges you’re touching on, at both an individual and societal scale. The creative challenges — again, that image of sun dogs — in navigating these big shifts in our ways of working together that change our orientation, our perception of one another. 

Are there any fruits from this process you could see reaching beyond the performance hall?

Nordstrum: I think the coming together with mutual respect, without an outcome in mind, but knowing that you are signed on to get there together. That you make a commitment to one another to create something beautiful and true and meaningful. That beginning together without a final story in mind, willing to come to the table with yourself and with your skills and with mutual admiration, is good practice.

“Beginning together without a final story in mind, willing to come to the table with yourself and with your skills and with mutual admiration, is good practice.”
— Kate Nordstrum

Wohl: And I think I was also hoping to open up new pathways for communication, to avoid getting stuck in just one way of working. Going back to your original question, it was about discovering a fresh approach to creating across disciplines. 

Nordstrum: Another good practice is to ask institutions to consider formula change from time to time. Orchestras don't typically consider commissions outside of music. It's not what they're seeking. But this project provided a new way for composers to work and imagine, which of course benefits orchestral music. It’s always worth asking for gaps to be addressed. I'm willing to do that.  

A GLIMPSE OF SUN DOGS

On Blue
Rafiq Bhatia, composer
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, filmmaker

Naked Blue
Devonté Hynes, composer
Mati Diop & Manon Lutanie, co-directors

Rise, Again
Arooj Aftab & Daniel Wohl, co-composers
Josephine Decker, filmmaker

Follow Daniel Wohl:
Website: danielwohlmusic.com
Instagram: @dwohl_ (instagram.com/dwohl_)

Follow Liquid Music for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/LiquidMusicSeries
Newsletter: liquidmusic.org/newsletter

Southern Bodies World Premiere // Kit Downes /  by Amy Chatelaine

“Music, for me, is a lot about intention and being present in the moment — how people deal with the moment together.”
— Kit Downes

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

Photo courtesy of the artist

The sounds emitted from Northrop’s historic Aeolian-Skinner Opus 892 often and readily cluster into constellations familiar to the pipe organ; in the hands of master-keyboardist Kit Downes, they are more likely to venture into the infinite unknown, beckoning the imagination up, out, and beyond. When the house lights go down, the stops are pulled, and wind rushes through the grove of pipes, a listening audience will find themselves swept up in the “boundless musical curiosity” so defining of the man recognized as a premiere British talent throughout the United Kingdom. 

Kit’s upcoming performance at Minneapolis’s Northrop Auditorium is the world premiere of his latest endeavor, Southern Bodies. For such an occasion, the luminary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell will share the stage. We, along with Kit, couldn’t be more elated — and it continues. In the interweaving of their distinct timbres, Kit and Bill will be joined by members of the prestigious Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra: Eunice Kim (violin), Daniel Orsen (viola), and Richard Belcher (cello). 

Southern Bodies is copresented by Liquid Music and Northrop. You can secure your tickets for what is sure to be an unforgettable evening right here. 

We are grateful to Kit for the reflections offered below, a small window into the upcoming performance for a curious audience.

A Q&A with Kit Downes

The world premiere of Southern Bodies is coming right on the tails of another release, Breaking the Shell, another exciting collaboration with Bill Frisell. How did your musical relationship with Bill begin? 

Reflections from Kit Downes, Bill Frisell, and Andrew Cyrille at the release of Breaking the Shell (September 26, 2024)

Kit Downes: Breaking the Shell came about through the producer Sun Chung, whom Bill, Andrew [Cyrille], and I had all worked with separately for ECM. He set it up, and I was lucky to be involved! Like millions of other fans, I have been listening to Bill’s playing and composing since I was very young. He is a huge part of how I think about music; it’s hard to understate what an impact his music had on me. So getting to play with him on that recording, and for this concert, makes my head spin. It’s like hearing my own childhood memories coming from the stage in real-time — it’s unbelievable. I feel so lucky to be able to share some music with him. 

Liquid Music is recognized as a laboratory for artists across genres, with an interest in nurturing bold ideas from composers and performing artists. Certainly the pipe organ and guitar are less conventional conversation partners! What would you say has been nurtured by taking the imaginative risk of that collaboration? 

Left: Kit Downes, photo courtesy of the artist | Right: Bill Frisell, photo by Monica Frisell

Downes: Instrumentation is an important factor for sure when making new music, but not the only one, or even the biggest one, I think. Music for me is a lot about intention and being present in the moment — how people deal with the moment together. This can happen on any combination of instruments and still be interesting. Of course the instrument choices add detail to the puzzle, and a strong context, but for me it’s about the people involved, and what they want to say and how they communicate as a group.

Of the many distinctive qualities of the pipe organ, one is that it’s site-specific — requiring a process of acquaintance for you, both of the instrument and the space. What are you anticipating with Northrop’s Aeolian-Skinner organ, and the space that holds it?

Downes: I’m familiar with the make of organ, having played one in the US before. I remember the balance and style of the instrument in general, although this instrument will have its own specifities and nuances, I’m sure. The space is the big unknown factor for me, and also the music itself — as much of it is brand new, as is the ensemble itself!

You’ve shared that Southern Bodies is, at least in part, a reference to the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. The celestial is also present in some of your past work — Light from Old Stars, as an early example. Is there an affinity, or curiosity for you there? What has it offered to your musicianship, if anything?

Downes: I tend to pick titles that touch on a few different things simultaneously that are going on — chance encounters and recurrent themes, both. They often are quite arbitrary anyway! One thing I would say about the night sky is that it’s this huge constant cosmic companion, wherever you are in the world — especially if you befriend it, learn some of its constellations. The familiarity of it helps me feel less alone when I am far away. 

Your sound has been described as at once “ethereal” and “earthy” — polarities that hold in common an elemental quality as a reference point. I’ve enjoyed reading reflections on the role of landscape throughout your work — with Obsidian, for example, and “Kasei Valles” on Breaking the Shell. Would you say that’s a particular access point for you as you explore the sounds and textures of your work?

Downes: That’s such a nice observation, I never thought of it. I guess I was always drawn to old traditional music because of this connection with nature, somehow. Something folk-ish, that anyone can appreciate, or that can be reinterpreted and relived a thousands different ways over a very long period — also like natural processes. It can be a mutual point that people with different ways of seeing things can take off from.

What is something outside of music that is animating you right now, that is life-giving?

Downes: Raising my daughter, definitely — I see everything differently now.

Follow Kit Downes:
Website: www.kitdownesmusic.com
Instagram: @kitdownesmusic (instagram.com/kitdownesmusic)

Follow Bill Frisell:
Website: www.billfrisell.com
Instagram: @bill.frisell (instagram.com/bill.frisell)

Follow The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra:
Website: www.thespco.org
Instagram: @thespco (instagram.com/thespco)

Follow Liquid Music for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/LiquidMusicSeries
Newsletter: liquidmusic.org/newsletter

Liquid Music at Chaillot // Emily Wells x Dimitri Chamblas /  by Amy Chatelaine

“Liquid Music is thinking more broadly about where, why, and with what partnerships to mount a project. What, in the world, is any given project calling for?” – Kate Nordstrum

Emily Wells performs Regards to the End | Photo: Karlie Efinger / Scott Carr

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

This week, Liquid Music arrives in the lustrous heart of Paris. Ours is one pulse in the company of performances animating the upcoming Chaillot Expérience, at the invitation of the visionary choreographer Dimitri Chamblas. Over four days, Chamblas will spotlight his current projects, collaborations, and ongoing partnerships.

With a kindred appreciation for the generative valence of movement and sound, Chamblas asked Liquid Music’s Kate Nordstrum to select a performing artist to fill the foyer of the historic Théâtre National de Chaillot. And we are delighted to have Emily Wells – polymathic composer, producer, and video artist – with us for this very special international venture.

But first:

Kate, Dimitri, and Emily trace the confluence of their pathways to the temple of dance in the city of light — a story told in three movements.

I.
Liquid Music x Studio Dimitri Chamblas:
“An artistic conversation that’s only just begun”

Kate Nordstrum reflects on the origins of the ever-developing creative partnership between Studio Dimitri Chamblas and Liquid Music:

I was introduced to Dimitri in 2018 through Ben Johnson, who was then the Director of Performing Arts for the city of Los Angeles (now Director of Arts for the city of Minneapolis). Ben knew that Dimitri had begun collaborating informally with Kim Gordon [Sonic Youth co-founder] and thought that might be something I'd be interested in for Liquid Music. I was working part-time with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that year, planning their centennial season Fluxus Festival (2018-19), so there were opportunities to meet a number of times without agenda in the beginning. I wanted to learn about Dimitri's work and vision, and we found we shared artistic priorities. I was very inspired by Dimitri's energy and spirit of "anything is possible."

Kate Nordstrum outside of Los Angeles at a shooting range, creating the score for Dick Higgins' The 1000 Symphonies in preparation for a Fluxus Festival event. As part of the festival, Kate would hire Dimitri to direct David Lang's crowd out for 1000 voices.

Kim Gordon, Kate Nordstrum, Dimitri Chamblas 

Both Dimitri and I have brought each other into our individual opportunities as curators and producers over the last six years. I feel challenged by our dialogue, and honored to be seen and valued by a colleague I admire so much — and sometimes even feel jealous of! Knowing ours is a long-term relationship is probably the most rewarding aspect. This is an artistic conversation that's only just begun.

II.
Chaillot Expérience:
An invitation to “the temple of dance”

Théâtre National de Chaillot | © Patrick Berger

Dimitri Chamblas shares the context of his work with Chaillot, and the theater’s historical significance in France:

Chaillot Expérience was proposed to me, as Palais de Chaillot does for maybe four or five artists every year. Palais de Chaillot in Paris — that's “the temple of dance,” right in front of the Eiffel Tower — it’s this big, amazing building with a program of such incredible curation. Historically, it was the théâtre populaire, which means “the theater for everyone.” And now it's the théâtre de la danse — still totally “populaire,” of course, but with an emphasis on dance as an art form, as a practice.

For Chaillot Expérience, I wanted to start the thinking in relation with my piece takemehome, which I'm showing the whole week in Chaillot. Basically, I wanted to continue exploring new possibilities of the relationships between moving bodies and sounds and music. That’s the whole curation of Chaillot Expérience. There's a workshop for 30 electric guitars. There's a participatory voice piece. There are different performances of dancers and musicians. There's music curation. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of things happening until late in the night. And then from the Palais de Chaillot, it will move to a nightclub to keep continuing — having a different type, though, of relation with moving bodies and music!

Dimitri Chamblas

“I feel very close, in my relationship with dance, to what Liquid Music is standing for: exploring different forms, approaching music in relation to other arts, and presenting in different types of spaces to give access to a large diversity of audience.”
— Dimitri Chamblas

The idea of inviting Liquid Music, inviting Kate, to come and participate is, for me, an invitation to collaborate around this topic — sharing ideas and giving her the possibility to invite an artist to be part of that. She proposed Emily Wells, who I discovered because of Kate. And of course I really loved her music, but also its relation with moving images and archival dance film. And also, I would say, some of the history of dance that she invites in the space of her live performance. So, yeah, I can't wait to have Liquid Music in Paris, and Kate and Emily.

I feel very close, in my relationship with dance, to what Liquid Music is standing for: exploring different forms, approaching music in relation to other arts, and presenting in different types of spaces to give access to a large diversity of audience. All of those goals and values are shared between myself and Liquid Music through Kate's leadership.

III.
Regards to the End:
A centering moment in the “beating heart” of Chaillot

Kate Nordstrum shares what inspired her pick of Regards to the End as Liquid Music’s feature in the Chaillot Expérience:

Regards to the End is an ever-evolving, magical piece of art by Emily Wells that Liquid Music has actively supported over the years. I wanted to deliver something that could bring big feelings into a large space full of bodies — a centering moment in the grand Foyer de la Dance, the "beating heart" of the building. I thought about Emily's brilliant use of archival dance films in her set, interwoven with images of early AIDS activism and extreme climate events, that stun and move viewers in inarticulable ways. Emily's music and visuals enliven the senses and bring people together in body and spirit. Her love of dance and awareness of how music moves in and through the body make her a beautiful fit for Dimitri's Chaillot Expérience.

Photo by Jay Mehal Britter

“Emily’s music and visuals enliven the senses and bring people together in body and spirit.”
— Kate Nordstrum

Emily Wells offers an intimate look into the life and movements of Regards to the End:

Music, or rather writing music, is a way for me to think, to explore literature, theory, visual art, and then respond through my most sentient language. I think about the climate crisis a lot: it’s at the foundation of life decisions, of worry, of grief. And in wrestling with this presence in my life, I looked for analogs from the past. That’s where I started to find links with the early AIDS crisis — the denial, bureaucracy, enormity, scapegoating of the weak — but those connections were just the door to what became Regards to the End.

I started reading a lot about climate crisis and the AIDS crisis. Then the pandemic descended, and I realized that I needed to expand the scope of my research, that “one cannot survive on terror alone.” So I turned to the people I knew best how to learn from: artists. I fell into their most sentient languages as a way to learn the muscle for myself: the muscle of survival in crisis, the absurd ability to hope and adapt that is innate in the process of making art.

Regards is a relic of that hope and survival. I hope it points to these teachers who, through their work, left us road maps for dealing with enormous unthinkable suffering and complicated togetherness. Their desire for beauty, joy, spontaneity, and most of all each other, was not snuffed out. That gives me courage.

Bringing Regards to Paris

Part of the excitement for me around the coming performance in Paris is the chance to be swept into a larger vision and community of makers. My performances tend to be quite meticulous in their planning and their engagement with the technology I employ. For Chaillot, I’ve tried to give myself a looser leash — and in that, to make way for improvisation and collaboration, including an invitation to Darian Donovan Thomas to sing with me on a few songs.

I started incorporating dance into my video work as a way to be less lonely on stage, and it’s grown into a deep relationship with the form and its history, as well as with choreographers — specifically with my frequent collaborator and friend, Raja Feather Kelly. I also became interested in the way footage of dance, documentations of activism, and captured moments of extreme climate events are linked; something about the way the bodies move in tandem, in reaction, and with tremendous agency, feels like shared language. Projecting these images while I play is a way to extend meaning, and to make more room for the immense emotional selfhood of each individual present.

Photo by Amber Tamblyn

One thing I've learned is that there is a desire, a need, for real human proximity — and that music can help facilitate that. Also, that people in a room together have a power that cannot be simulated. And that making work is in itself a belief in the future.

A few things for climate activism inspired by the early AIDS activists: we have to be talking about it, not mired or alone in fear, and we have to be loud and specific about what we want and need. Significantly, they knew how to inject their protests with both humor and poignancy.

I wish I could say I’ve had some clear epiphany about the future and how to proceed in it through my time sharing Regards. I think I still have more to learn, and more honestly, more to act on. But the one thing I’m certain of: it’s going to take a lot of us to make anything move.

Follow Dimitri Chamblas:
Website: www.dimitrichamblas.com
Instagram: @dimitrischamblas (instagram.com/dimitrichamblas)

Follow Emily Wells:
Website: www.emilywellsmusic.com
Instagram: @emilywellsmusic (instagram.com/emilywellsmusic)
Spotify: Emily Wells

Follow Liquid Music for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
 Facebook: facebook.com/LiquidMusicSeries
Newsletter: liquidmusic.org/newsletter

The Conversations That Make a Voice // Josh Johnson /  by Amy Chatelaine

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

Photo by Robbie Jeffers

What a curious play of perception, how readily the ear can mistake the vibration of wood or the push of breath through brass for the human voice. Some argue the cello most closely mimics our particular timbre; others stand fervently for the French horn. For composer, multi-instrumentalist, and Grammy Award-winning producer Josh Johnson, it was the saxophone whose likeness called to him from an early age, and would draw him into a vibrant array of reed-mediated conversations for years to come. A prolific collaborator, you can hear Josh in the company of Jeff Parker, Meschell Ndegeocello, Marquis Hill, Harry Styles, Broken Bells, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (check out his full discography if you relish a divergence of discoveries and surprise encounters). He also served as musical director for Leon Bridges from 2018 to 2022.

In recent years, Josh has achieved two albums as a solo artist. His latest, Unusual Object, will be the parlance of his Minneapolis debut. And if you’ve yet to spend an evening nestled amidst the islands of velvet and light at Berlin, let this be your introduction to the North Loop’s oasis for jazz and delectable company. Find your tickets here for Josh’s September 27th performance, co-presented by Liquid Music and Berlin.

Berlin | Minneapolis, MN (Photo by Isabel Subtil)

But as you’ll read below, Josh takes the category of “solo album” and turns it into a question, one central to the composition of Unusual Object. 

Perhaps the singularity of Josh Johnson is, paradoxically, a voice that both holds and invites conversation with multiple (and yes, sometimes unusual) others. To be present to his sound is to join a broader consideration of the voices we lean toward, and those that might repel — to an effect that inspires you to keep in the dialogue. It is an invitation to be part of an audience whose attention brings questions like, What feels familiar, and why? And, What feels jarring, and why? And then perhaps, What happens next?

We hope to meet you there. In the meantime, for your eavesdropping pleasure, a conversation with Josh Johnson:

Photo by Robbie Jeffers

This interview took place on August 16, 2024, and has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Amy Chatelaine: This will be your Minneapolis debut as a solo performing artist. You’re currently based in LA, but from the Midwest originally, is that right? 

Josh Johnson: Yeah. So I was born in Maryland, but when I was pretty young, we moved to Illinois, about an hour from Chicago. That's where I grew up. 

Chatelaine: What do you remember about your earliest draw to the saxophone? And what was going on in your life at that time that specifically sparked a connection with jazz?

Johnson: Well, I started on piano first when I was a bit younger — I don't know if it’s in fifth or sixth grade where, in band, you get to pick an instrument. And actually, saxophone wasn't my first choice initially; it was drums. But there was something about saxophone I connected with. I don't know that I would have articulated it this way at 10, but it felt like the saxophone could be like the human voice.

More specifically, a year or two into playing I had asked my parents for Christmas for some recordings of people playing the saxophone, and they went out and bought four or five CDs, different stuff. There was one in particular that I really connected with, this compilation of recordings of the tenor saxophone. And I remember thinking, even at that age, it sounds like somebody's speaking to me, like I'm hearing someone's voice. And I think that ignited something in me. I felt a connection to that possibility of, wow, through an instrument you can speak to somebody in a literal way. It just captured me. It had this swagger and this freedom, but also a singular method of expression that I really connected with.

Josh Johnson performs "Marvis" (listen in full)

Chatelaine: As a highly sought-after collaborator, much of your musical career has been very conversational. And in the past few years, you've achieved two solo projects, Unusual Object the most recent. You’re quoted in the release by Northern Spy Records, describing this project as “a development and documentation of a more personal world of sound” after time spent further sharpening your own compositional voice. Would you say the conversational nature of collaboration played a particular role in finding your singular voice as a solo artist?

Johnson: Absolutely. I feel very lucky to be trusted often with other people's music. One of the things I love about collaborating is getting insight into how other people experience the world and hear and see. It allows me to access, or get to consider, different perspectives — and all of that from so many different sources. It has helped me zero in on what speaks to me, and to expand the things that I see. 

I take a lot of lessons from other people and get to be like, What's it like to explore this in my own world? For every person, there are certain things that are really flexible, and certain things that are rigid. And it's really different in every context. I'm often encouraged in collaboration by seeing places where I maybe have been less flexible but somebody else is very flexible, and it encourages me to explore that within my own sonic world. 

Collaboration has offered me a space to develop a lot of my ideas as well. A big one, and maybe an important influence leading to Unusual Object, is playing with Jeff Parker. Specifically, there's a band called the ETA Quartet, which improvised together for many, many years. I've been interested in electronics, but I really got an opportunity to explore that solely through improvisation in shared space with Jeff and Anna [Butterss] and Jay [Bellerose]. A lot of the things I found through improvising with all this stuff in real time. Over time I started to catalog, to accumulate a palette. And as I got closer to considering what my next record was going to be, I had the feeling of, I've gotten to explore and connect with all these sounds, but what's it like to now try to put a frame around it, to design the architecture myself?

Chatelaine: It strikes me that there’s a significance to improv being inherent to that process. The search for one’s unique creative voice can sometimes become overly earnest, or stressful in some ways. But improv by nature feels so permissive and playful, and just a good spirit to go on. 

“ I think that [playfulness] comes as a byproduct of authenticity, or just being honest and attentive to the things that you’re drawn towards, the things that move you.”
— Josh Johnson

Johnson: Yeah, the exploration with play is completely important to my practice and just my existence since, both in and outside of music. I think that comes as a byproduct of authenticity, or just being honest and attentive to the things that you're drawn towards, the things that move you.

Chatelaine: Does that come naturally to you, that playfulness? Or is it something you've cultivated over time?

Johnson: That's a good question. When I got into music that was present, definitely. But I think somewhere in the midst of the study of music it got lost a little bit. I think that can happen, I feel like I have many friends and collaborators who've experienced something similar. I had to relearn or reengage with that playfulness and understand it as a strength, that it's actually foundational to my experiences with music.

Chatelaine: How do you go about continuing to cultivate that, or returning to it when it feels like it's gone out of reach?

Johnson: Especially in improvisation, one way that I try to reconnect to that is by allowing myself to get lost. It pushes me into a sort of problem solving and attentive state. So for me, part of that practice in music is getting lost, or trying to get lost, because that forces me to find a creative way back. It’s almost like it gives me something to react and respond to. And it has to be playful by nature. It's like, Okay, how do I get out of this? Or, How do I make it back? What's the creative pathway I can find back to wherever it is trying to get to? 

“For me, part of that practice in music is getting lost, or trying to get lost, because that forces me to find a creative way back.”
— Josh Johnson

It took me a while to, maybe it seems simple, but to understand that you can be serious about the work and about the art, but you don't have to take it too seriously. I've had some examples, mentors for me who — I think I took a while to understand the beauty and having both of those things. A certain amount of play suggests a comfortability or a confidence in your ability to navigate something. 

When I'm collaborating with or improvising with other people, sometimes that looks like in the moment really choosing to redirect my attention. It might be that I want everything I play to be in conversation with the bass drum for a little bit, or something that just gives me a different access point to creativity.

Chatelaine: You mentioned you've had several mentors that you look to that really lift up and dignify the role of playfulness. Who are some of those mentors for you?

Johnson: Yeah, I moved to California for a master’s fellowship program — it was more like direct mentorship, and one of the people that I was most excited about spending time with was Wayne Shorter, who recently passed. To me, he was somebody who really embodied that sense of play, and with so much depth and deep feeling. If you care to zoom in and get analytical, there's so much to be excavated. But even with all that depth, there always was a sense of play and a sense of humor. It's almost like it had the ability to make all of the colors more complex. Or it's like adding texture to color, or something like that. 

And in the time I got to spend with him, so many of the lessons and directions didn't utilize musical language. They'd be like, What's it like for you to improvise as if you're this actor playing this role? What's it like to pretend you don't know how to play? All these, not always just prompts, but things that encouraged play and encouraged me to zoom out in a way that still gives access to all these things, but also another doorway and one that might actually have the ability to expand what it is that I’m trying to do. It’s playing music that's influenced by so many other things besides music.

Chatelaine: Turning to Unusual Object now, what were some of the things you were in conversation with when composing that album? Or is there a particular conversation you feel it's having on its own?

Johnson: Yeah, maybe some of both. One question initially it was, What is a solo album? There's a rich tradition of solo saxophone albums, maybe trending towards the avant garde. But the contemplation of that, and just asking myself, What does that really mean? and trying to come to a definition of my own was less instrument specific, but more about inputs. Whereas I do a lot of collaboration, this contrasted in being this one input — and that can be saxophone, that can be electronics, that can be synthesizer, but it's really just one source. And that to me is a version of a solo album — one that is maybe explored more in vocal music, but in instrumental music, I don't know that there’s the same framework. Or often, if there is a framework for a solo album, many times its goal is to demonstrate virtuosity on an instrument specifically. That was not for me; I was interested in not being that.

In terms of being in conversation with other things, there's quite a lot in there. I think I'm interested in poking at genre and asking, What? Why? Why we have a need for it, and who stands to gain from genre, to fit things into a frame, perhaps. [Unusual Object] is in conversation with some things specific to jazz, some stuff specific to electronic music. And also blending it all together, and blurring the lines. I feel really interested in the stuff on the margins and the ways in which when you reach the limits of something, stuff that's unexpected happens. You can also utilize that as a tool and develop a voice on the margins, and often that might lead you to something that is really personal and unique.

Chatelaine: And maybe gaining a hearing for other voices there, too. 

Johnson: Mmm.

Chatelaine: There was an interview you gave back in 2020 that described your creative vision as being “equally parts fresh and familiar.” And then, “homey without ever being comfortable.” How do you think about holding those two experiences together? And when did that become important for you?

Johnson: I think it's always been important to me, or I've experienced so much music that way. Music has been an entry point or a catalyst to so many thoughts and conversations outside of music. And there's been so much music that's encouraged me and made me believe we can imagine something better than what we already have and what we know.

“There’s a lot in the world in this moment that seeks to make things flat and one dimensional. I’m interested in participating in, and trying to create experiences that encourage us to reconnect with the fact that there’s so much more color.”
— Josh Johnson

I'm interested in opening a door to a space for somebody, less than dictating an experience. But I believe that people want to feel things deeply. And I think we have a need for that, even if when we put on music that's not always what we think we're doing it for. I’m interested in creating a space that’s hard to define. Not out of trying to push people away, but that has layers in a way that reflects humanity. Maybe that sounds grandiose, but in ways that — I don't know how to describe this exactly, but that's very much the experience of being a human, you know? There's a lot in the world in this moment that seeks to make things flat and one dimensional. I'm interested in participating in, and trying to create experiences that encourage us to reconnect with the fact that there's so much more color.

Chatelaine: This has been such a lovely conversation, Josh, thank you. As we draw to a close, what are some things outside of music that are animating you right now, that are life-giving?

Johnson: So this is hobby-world, but mending clothing is an interest of mine. I’ve been interested in things and practices that encourage me to slow down and pay attention, because there’s so much that is doing the opposite, you know? And I can feel the effects on my attention span. I love sitting with something, and just using my hands, and engaging all of my senses. 

Also, increasingly I find myself drawn to poetry for small bites of beauty. That’s something that’s been energizing me and lifting me up. I have a few different collections around the house, but I have a little book next to my bed, and I’ve been trying to — not always succeeding — but instead of reaching for the phone the first thing in the morning, what if I experience something beautiful, and that’s the way my day starts? 

Photo by Robbie Jeffers

Follow Josh Johnson:
Website: joshjohnsonmusic.com
Instagram: @joshuaajohn (instagram.com/joshuaajohn)


Follow Liquid Music for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/LiquidMusicSeries
Newsletter: liquidmusic.org/newsletter

Terminal Habitat Collapse // Trever Hagen x Josh Berg /  by Amy Chatelaine

A Point of Entry

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

We are at the doorway of our 2024 Fall Season of Liquid Music, about to step out onto a vast plain of fresh performances — discovering new entry points along the way in the space between movement and sound, time and place, audience and performing artist. We begin with Trever Hagen (composer, performer, writer) and Josh Berg (producer, engineer), in their presentation of Terminal Habitat Collapse.

In these first days of September, Hagen and Berg are together in Minneapolis for a Northrop artist residency to endeavor this new collaborative project, an idea that took root in early 2024. Terminal Habitat Collapse presents a sonic narration of the Anthropocene, creating an “immersive soundscape of ecological change” through engagement with quadraphonic sound. 

You can experience this work-in-development as a special feature of the Northrop Open House on September 12, copresented by Liquid Music. Come take this first step with us into the new season, and roam the halls of Northrop for a rare look behind-the-scenes of a local gem in the Minneapolis arts community (full schedule here). 

Left: Trever Hagen (Photo by Graham Tolbert). Right: Josh Berg (Photo courtesy of the artist).

Hagen and Berg offered a short introduction to Terminal Habitat Collapse, sharing these words ahead of their departure to Minneapolis:

pre-residency Q&A with Trever Hagen + Josh Berg

How did the two of you come to work together on this project?

Trever Hagen: We first met in Berlin in 2016 as part of the first PEOPLE festival and have been collaborating on various collective projects since then. In Spring 2024, I attended a quadraphonic ensemble in LA that Josh had recommended me check out and, after discussing, we decided to put our heads and hearts together to create a new piece. We combined my interest in “new pastoralism” with Josh’s experiments in quad under the idea of Terminal Habitat Collapse.

Josh, you’ve worked with a range of performing artists, from Ye to Bon Iver to the late Mac Miller. How would you describe your role in creative production?

Josh Berg: My role is: CREATE SPACE TO CREATE. In order to facilitate the work, I discover what the artists need and implement the process. This always involves technical work but it also engages a sympathetic understanding where I can see the artists’ vision and make sure that they have a clear path to get there.

What exactly is quadraphonic sound? 

Berg: Sound coming from four discrete sources. Think of four perfectly spaced dots along a circle. Solstice and equinox. This overlays perfectly with our natural experience of the four corners of a room making quad the simplest representation of how we actually experience the world sonically.

What was the draw to pastoralism as an aesthetic framework — one you’re renovating in Terminal Habitat Collapse? 

Hagen: Pastoralism represents a nexus of aesthetics and ecology formed by the human gaze. It’s seemingly what human culture wants nature to be at some level: bucolic, placid but submissive, dominated. A couple summers ago I was canoeing in the Boundary Waters thinking about pastoral landscapes as I looked at the sunrise on a lake. Along with that sunrise there was also a haze from the Canadian wildfires. In that moment pastoralism felt ridiculous in the hubris of human activity and in the face of what is arguably a new sense of the pastoral: whole towns burning (e.g. Lahaina, HI), rising sea levels displacing people (e.g. Tuvalu), waterways that poison those who drink it (e.g. Flint, MI). This is the pastoral now. This is what nature is becoming for humans in the short term, with the long term conclusion being terminal habitat collapse for our species. So “new pastoralism” is simply an aesthetic perspective or set of sensory materials that aims to shine the light on the relationship between nature and humans as we know it at the beginning of the 21st century. 

What will be unique about the audience experience of this performance?

Berg: For most it will be to actually experience a piece written in and for quadraphonic sound. We defy the idea that you “look at” a performance and rather invite the audience into the circle, literally. We also reframe the understanding of where we are going as a species by offering a less ambiguous term to describe our destination and sonically narrating the journey.

Hagen: As Josh noted, I think listeners have a lot of agency in quadraphonic performances in that you are invited into the performance. The outcome or the performance may be less determined, this way — almost like a happening.

Experience the performance at the 2024 Northrop Open House
Copresented by Liquid Music
Thursday, September 12 | 4:30–5:00 pm
Northrop Rehearsal Studio (Ground Level, East)
Free and open to the public

Follow Trever Hagen:
Website: treverhagen.com
Instagram: @t.r.e.v.r (instagram.com/t.r.e.v.r)

Follow Josh Berg:
Website: infinitevibrationtechnology.com
Instagram: @love_burg (instagram.com/love_burg)

Follow Liquid Music for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/LiquidMusicSeries
Newsletter: liquidmusic.org/newsletter

Sounds Continue to Migrate: A Conversation with Moor Mother /  by Amy Chatelaine

“I believe it’s all one continual story, one continuous moment, vibrating at different frequencies.”
– Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother)

Moor Mother (Photo: Ebru Yildiz)

Experience Moor Mother's The Great Bailout on September 14 at the Walker Art Center, presented in partnership with Liquid Music. Find your tickets here.

An excerpted conversation between Camae Ayewa and her collaborator Brandon Stosuy, published in full at walkerart.org:

Camae Ayewa, who performs as Moor Mother, is a poet, visual artist, touring musician, and professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.

Her recent large-scale work, The Great Bailout, uses as its starting point the United Kingdom’s 1837 Slave Compensation Act, which gave tax bailouts to former slave owners, but nothing to the liberated people. The resulting unwavering sonic meditation—dark, powerful, deeply political and personal—is a nonlinear word map that charts connections across colonialism, slavery, and commerce in Great Britain, along with its modern parallels in the United States.

Ayewa released The Great Bailout as a proper album in March of 2024. It was followed a few months later by an expanded edition, which included earlier versions of the pieces recorded with the London Contemporary Orchestra. The upcoming site-specific Walker performance of The Great Bailout is the first large-scale presentation of the project in the United States.

Brandon Stosuy: I’ve seen you perform dozens of times, and you never do the same show twice. Over the years, as you’ve worked more with classical music and in large-scale institutions like Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, your live performances have grown more ambitious, with additional collaborators and variables.

When people perform the same set over and over, it offers a bit of a safety net, but you keep experimenting. What is it that inspires you to approach live performance this way?

Camae Ayewa: I love the concept of reworking: that the music continues to breathe, the music continues to live, and in different situations, the music continues to grow. That’s important to me. I never want to stay locked into the sounds. The sounds continue to migrate, they continue to grow—they continue to have their own life, shall I say. And it’s my job or my passion to keep finding new ways to approach the work, but also new ways for the work to still be grounded in the present. And that’s what’s really interesting to me.

My writing style is about leaving space for the unknown and for the stories of the present moment. I believe it’s all one continual story, one continuous moment, vibrating at different frequencies. It is important to bring out all the layers, present all the layers, as if it was an infinity mirror that continues to shine light, that continues to reflect.

BS: The Great Bailout, the basis for your performance at the Walker: Can you give a bit of background on it?

CA: The project came about when I was commissioned by the Tusk Festival in England to present a work with an orchestra and to create a theme. At that moment, when I was thinking what I could do, I felt it was imperative to focus on a historical moment that still has its residue, or remnants, here in the present. This was, of course, a risky move, to put this type of work out there, but I felt that we had to honor the creative mind and honor all the things that have happened on this planet, really. To dwell into that and close the timeline.

BS: This is the first full-scale performance of The Great Bailout in the U.S. How did you arrive at the approach for the Walker performance?

CA: My approach was to pick the right ingredients…

[Continue reading at walkerart.org]

Follow Moor Mother:
Website: moormother.net
Instagram: @moormother (instagram.com/moormother)
Facebook: facebook.com/MoorMother

Follow Liquid Music for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/LiquidMusicSeries
Newsletter: liquidmusic.org/newsletter

Partners in Process, in Art + Life // Kate Wallich x Perfume Genius /  by Amy Chatelaine

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

“Standby lights…” 

“Lights on…”

“Standby music and haze…”  

“Music and haze go…” 

Unfurling across the stage, a thick fog poured into the rapt audience scattered throughout Minneapolis’s Northrop auditorium. An atmospheric shift is what it felt like, the room charged with electric tensions caught in the spotlight beams hovering overhead. 

Choreographer Kate Wallich and Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas and Alan Wyffels) are back together as creative partners following their 2019 success, The Sun Still Burns Here, joined now by collaborator Tate Justus. We were about to enter the first contours of their new movement landscape, the highly-anticipated sophomore project scheduled to premiere in the 2025-26 arts season, commissioned by Seattle Theatre Group and Liquid Music l Northrop. 

And we couldn’t be more thrilled. 

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

“Standby shrimp on ice…”

“Enter shrimp on ice…”

An amplified voice continued to cue the opening scene into being, element by element, its source imperceptible until a crewmember slowly wheeled a limp figure forward from stage right. Splayed across a pile of empty Culligan bottles, Kate Wallich rested one arm across her chest, a microphone tilted up to her mouth.

You might expect to hear cues like this during a rehearsal for traditional stage performances. But when collaborating on a work-in-progress across artistic genres, what cues create a container for an entirely new world to emerge? What cues signal that it’s working?

The fog continued to roll and wrap us in its ambiguities — between performance and daily life, voyeurism and participation. It was not a fog for us to decode as an audience, but to enter with the performing artists as they traversed these points of tension across the stage. 

Ten days of their first creative residency yielded an astonishing 30 minutes of material, presented by Kate, Mike, Alan, and Tate, and brought into the minds and bodies of the audience in the vibrant talk-back that followed. 

TURNING TO THE AUDIENCE

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

House lights came up, and the quartet pulled up chairs at the stage’s edge, joined by Kate Nordstrum, Liquid Music Founding Director and facilitator of the Kate Wallich x Perfume Genius match in 2019. 

Wallich opened the talk-back by turning the mic to the audience of Liquid Music | Northrop subscribers and guests, inviting us to share our impressions and observations: “Any sort of ‘Wow, that made me feel dark,’ or ‘That made me feel light.’ Not necessarily, ‘I liked that’ or ‘I didn’t.’”

After a brief pause, the first hand went up: “When you looked directly into the camera, that felt exciting.”

Then — in the familiar levee-break of most Q&As — the gates opened to a flood of voices from across the room:

“The flow of going from a lot of music and sound to just the fan felt very intense.” 

“It felt like getting sucked inside a TikTok video.”

“I felt my pupils dilating.”

“There was something very liminal and intimate and other worldly.”

Welcoming the audience into a shared starting point of the body — its sensation, its associations, its knowing — was in many ways a brilliant primer for us to step into their creative process as collaborators in our own right, offering crucial feedback in these early stages of discovery.

While you wait in this gestation period ahead of the 2025-2026 season, know your anticipation is shared as Kate, Mike, Alan, and Tate continue to meet over the course of the next year: to listen, and to move their way through what this piece has to say, to what it wants to become. 

In the meantime, I sat down with Kate Wallich for a deeper dive into their process of becoming — as cross-genre collaborators, and as publicly engaged artists.

 IN CONVERSATION WITH KATE WALLICH

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

[This interview took place on June 23, 2024, and has been edited for clarity and conciseness.]

Kate Wallich: I’ve always said my skill set is — and this is the dancer side of me — that I can feel where there is a lack in the world, and then figure out how to bring the right people together to meet the need. It’s when I want a place to go that doesn’t exist, a place to belong. I start to build, and then assess if it’s the right thing: going through rounds to see if it’s a fertile thing, if my desire for a place to belong is shared, if there are other people who need that, too. 

I started a series in Los Angeles called WIP, which stands for work-in-progress. One of the goals is to shepherd an audience through the creation of a work. Each WIP features a moderated dialogue kind of like what we did with Kate [Nordstrum] at the show, and I feel that conversations like this are important when you’re just starting to develop a work: understanding where we’re at as a society, and understanding the public implications of the work. 

Amy Chatelaine: How would you say your WIP approach is informing this current project?

KW: Mike and I made The Sun Still Burns Here in 2019 — that creation process actually started in 2018, and was the last stage work that I’d made. Post-pandemic, I made a huge move to Los Angeles. Mike and Alan live in LA, and that was part of the reason I wanted to move. We’d developed a deep artistic relationship and a lot of movement language through the creation of The Sun Still Burns Here. In order to go harder and deeper into those, we needed to be in closer proximity. 

My desire to make dances has shifted as I’ve gotten older — I’m no longer functioning in the confines of a dance company, which I did for 10 years. Part of the reason why I brought in the idea for WIP is because I was feeling myself go through a process in my body where I was going to the studio alone, and it wasn’t like this end goal, but something that was developing. And I needed an opportunity to put that in front of an audience and see what exactly was happening, why I was having that desire. 

I was using my practice I’d always used in a dance company: I go into a studio, I start to develop a movement language, and then I start to see how I can transcribe that onto other dancers. In that process, I actually realized what I was working through was a self-care practice, and that a desire to transcribe movement onto dancers in the same way I had done inside the context of a dance company wasn’t really there anymore. It was clear that throughout the pandemic and this really profound experience I had with Mike and Alan through the creation of The Sun Still Burns Here, that something in my cycles of creation were shifting in a major way.

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

I think because I have this entrepreneurial side to me, sometimes I need a container in order to discover something about my creative practice, before I can find the expression. And so I did that with WIP, and a lot of major discoveries came out of that. And it was also a confirmation for me that I did want to go deeper and harder into this relationship with Mike and Alan and figure out what this movement world is going to be.

We have a lot of questions going into this project, but the leading questions are defining themselves right now. And so what you saw [in the open rehearsal] was all the past experiences we’ve had — of movement languages, body memories, rehearsals, understandings — they were all coming into this pot, and for this first time being looked at. Not even sorted through, not even strategized, really. Just looked at, witnessed, and then put out into a play zone to start seeing what could be there.

AC: During the talk-back, you emphasized the role of trust in making a collaborative piece like this, and it’s really clear that you’ve developed that across these six years of your artistic relationship. And it’s also sounding like part of the draw to a WIP approach was to cultivate that sense of trust in yourself and your intuition. I just hear that as the work so many of us are doing right now, developing trust in our bodily intelligence. 

In your creative partnership, how do you support one another in tuning into and really staying with, remaining curious about, and respecting the intelligence of your intuition and what the body holds?

KW: It’s really interesting, because I have this deep relationship with Mike and Alan — it’s both very professional and very personal. We’re also friends and spend a lot of time together, almost more like family. And Tate is a new tone and personality that we brought into that mix. 

So to speak about bodily trust and supporting each other throughout the creative process — you had mentioned the role of cueing. One of the things that has been coming up so far in this process — I did work with a dance company for a long time, and for dancers, it’s like “noted, locked in, sealed.” It’s just part of their body intelligence; they can remember choreography. Not only am I working with three non-dancers who don’t really have that, but Tate has never really been inside of our structured rehearsal or creation process. There’s not the body memory to become three-dimensionally aware. Part of that cueing was to create repetition, which builds body memory. It was really a practical thing. 

All of us are in a place of trying to trust and support each other, and I’m also trusting what that’s revealing for the piece we’re creating as well. And not just in terms of cueing. Like Tate’s desire to just come on stage with those boots — I didn’t direct that. That was Tate’s idea. He didn’t really have the idea, even; he just did it. And I love that. 

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

“There was this pair of boots that were just hanging out in the hallway for a while. We’d all been eyeing them, and this morning I just put them on. They made a really great sound, so I just kind of took a gallop. And that’s a lot of what you’re seeing – people getting together, pulling at our psychological attractions: seeing them, wearing them, looking at them different ways. I mean, we’re pulling from our life: it’s just random sometimes, and we’re seeing if it makes any kind of sense. And this is just the beginning stage of it.”
Tate Justus (May 2024 open rehearsal)

As a choreographer, I have my own internal ways of strategizing behavioral outcomes inside of a room, especially when dealing with a lot of different dynamics. But everybody else has their own approach to that and their own practices, and what’s coming out is a mixture of that. And I think that’s because there’s this mutual — I don’t even know if it’s really even trust right now; it’s almost like an openness, and a mutual respect, or awe, maybe? Like we’re all in awe of each other — and maybe that’s too grandiose. I’m like, “I like your ideas. I want more of your ideas.” And because we all have that for each other, I think that something interesting is coming out.

I think bodily trust is something that comes with time, and learning and listening, and practice.

AC: Hearing you reflect on this, I keep going back and forth between practices in your process and practices in public life. Like your practice of role reversal, which I’ve seen used by facilitators in conflict transformation work, when bringing people together across significant difference — in ideology, in values, in approaches to live into those values. And hearing you say that before trust is even established, there’s a necessary openness and respect, and even something like awe — that just strikes me a wise starting point for the creative work of our civic life as well.

I’m wondering, for those practices, where did you first encounter them as a tool in a collaborative process?

KW: I think a lot has come down to finding practical solutions for a need. And a lot of this is coming from my body. I’ve always been in the works I’ve created, because as a dancer I need to experience something in my body in order to understand what needs to happen, and what choices I need to be making.

In my early days directing in a company, I could step outside and watch and be like, Yes. No. Or, Yes, but slow down your thought process. But being inside the role of the dancer, I needed someone to tell me I was making decisions too fast. Because I couldn’t do both at once. 

I realized earlier on in my practice that in order to do two things at once, I needed to develop a practice of duality. So I started to put duality practices into our morning warmup: how can I be thinking of the physical endings of my body while also seeing the birds eye view of my body? And that took so much control, because I’m really responsive and reactive. 

But I also realize, when you talk about process and public life, that can be a really unhealthy way of being a person in the world. So I also had to develop these practices in my actual life, to be able to hold back feelings I may have in my body and have that bird's eye view in my real life as well. If something triggers me, I’m not just going to react in my body. If I was taking the director’s role, I wouldn’t want to see that either — that’s unhinged. Maybe there are times for unhinged on the stage, but that’s very designed and contained. 

So I had to develop practices to practice that. I love a framework, like: when a text activates you, you wait 20 minutes to respond — that’s a framework I can follow. I think because I’m a choreographer, when I’m in the studio that’s already how I think, you know? I’m a container / framework person. And so figuring out how to build those practices into my life in some ways comes from choreography. And then sometimes I would learn a framework from the world, or from having to go through a mediation process with someone, and I’d be like, “Oh that’s actually really helpful. Are there ways to integrate that into the studio as well?”

AC: Totally, it’s all creative work at the end of the day: human relationship and stage production. 

At the very beginning of the open rehearsal, you were reflecting back to 2018 when you first met Mike and Alan, and you said something really gorgeous: that you saw two people living their life in the way you were wanting to, in the relationship between the art they were making and how they were living. Could you say more about that?

KW: Yeah, exactly. And speaking of frameworks or tools to navigate being a person in the world, I think we all spend a lot of time on that and we like talking about it. So when we met, I think we had this cosmic moment of “Oh, we can do that together.” It’s very rare that you meet people who are willing to go to that line. Or maybe you don’t get the opportunity to, because when you are in a dance studio or in a process, that’s a level of intimacy you don’t just get meeting someone in a coffee shop, or honestly even with a casual friend. 

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

AC: Do you have a shared litmus test for when something’s working as you’re creating this together?

KW: I think it’s a relational sense of alignment we’ve developed over time. 

Part of the 2018/2019 commission was that we were co-directing together, which was new for me. When Mike and I started working together, I think I was very attuned to that shared leadership. But also, Mike didn’t have the experience of directing in this genre. I wanted him to feel a part of the dance making process, and he wanted me to feel a part of the music making process. So I suggested an infrastructure to be able to find alignment, to pose questions that helped us say, maybe we didn’t like this, or, could you consider the fact that you don’t like what I’m suggesting right now. To actually have that conversation. 

And I think since, we’ve been able to build on that. This is where role reversal comes in. I’m like, “Mike I really want you to see this, because I want you to see if you like this direction we’re going.” But then also creating these opportunities for everybody. 

When things feel right, my metaphor I use a lot for sensing energy — things can sometimes feel like your spine is out of whack, or your back is slightly off, and when you can just crack it into place, that’s alignment. And I think we can all sense that. And then you can invite languaging and ask people to make sure everyone is aligned before making a decision to go on. 

AC: You were talking about how, as a choreographer, there’s this fluidity between the containers and frameworks you’re finding in the world and what you’re bringing into the studio, and vice versa. Going back to the role of the audience in an open rehearsal, as witness to your creative process, specifically: do you have hopes or curiosities about how they might pick up the practices you shared, and bring them into their own lives, especially in the world as it is now?

KW: I think we really do, and I think we learned a lot from The Sun Still Burns Here. Oftentimes in other practices, the curator plays a significant role and wall text is a big deal. And dance and live performance is such a visceral thing. Not to say visual art isn’t visceral; it totally is. But I think one of the things we lacked in The Sun Still Burns Here was getting people to feel what we were feeling, and to fully understand what we were attempting to do.

Now, I feel like we’re in this place where we’re like, Okay, we’re continuing this collaboration: what do we want people to go away with? What do we want people to feel? And also, what are we exploring? And how are we turning this into a question, or a statement, or a thesis in some way? 

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

We honestly don’t know what that is right now. I think in a lot of ways, we brought in questions, we brought in practicalities of, Who’s here? What are our identities? What are our identity politics? What are the shared viewpoints? What are the universal viewpoints? Where are we at right now in the world, in our lives? These are all big things, but I think what’s revealing itself is this deeper thing. 

So right now we’re creating this space for tonality, for a certain energy in the room with an audience. And we’re trying to figure out what that is. What is that space doing, how is that space creating a larger echo or imprint on the world or culture? I think that’s rooted in queerness and in non-traditional relationship dynamics. I think that’s rooted in our own privileges as white people. There’s a lot in there that’s hard to pinpoint, but is rooted in who we are as people, and who we are in the world. 

AC: Everything you named, I think we can get so locked in our heads about, so philosophical about — and distanced from the lived realities. And the thing that’s so striking, so convincing about your process is having the starting point being in these body-based practices. I think that attunement to the body, its intuition and its stored memory, is both an old intelligence but a fresh intelligence I see others reaching for as a corrective that’s fertile and helpful.

KW: I made a work in 2017 that I would describe as more about creating space to tune into the mundane or the boring. The way the work manifested was really slow, like when you watch a slow movie, even if a lot is happening. Or something like watching a garden grow. If you remember [from the open rehearsal] that sort of desperate landscape where we were all doing our own task-based things — imagine that for a whole hour. 

I do think that in taking the approach of psychological attractions — letting everything just be in the pot — that the greater conceptual meaning will start to reveal itself over time. But you actually need time for that to be revealed. And that’s why I’ve been so excited about starting this creation process with a residency. We’re probably going to use a lot of what we developed already. But in terms of what the work is, what the work means, how the work is resonating with people, I think it’s going to take some time to pinpoint.  

Photo by Jayme Halbritter

AC: What does it look like from here?

KW: This was a big start, and we’ll need more creation. We’re planning more residencies for the next year in various places to keep visiting the work, spending time away from it, going in and out – kind of like how a painter paints and steps away, and then returns. It takes a long time to make the painting, and that’s kind of what we’re doing right now.

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