thirteen ways

The Phot and I became much better acquainted during rehearsals last week.

From last Friday until this Monday, 8bb worked with composer Tamar Muskal, digital artist Danny Rozin and Israeli director Amitay Yaish on the staging for Tamar’s new composition, Mirrors. This is a major project for the group, and the tour will introduce a number of firsts: touring with microphones and a sound tech bloke (the multi-talented Ryan Ingebritsen); touring with an extensive multimedia setup; actually having to “act” (you know…um, think of Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys) as well as play from memory.

The Duv had organized the studio spectacularly well before rehearsals began. A huge screen, complete with projector, sat in the middle of the studio; a digital video camera was set up on top of a tall, thin stand; tape was placed on the ground to denote the edges of the camera’s frame.

The video camera’s image was processed and transformed by a computer running one of Danny’s three “digital mirror” programs, one for each of the compositions movements. This transformed image was projected onto the screen.

Here are the three mirrors. One - snow mirror:

Two - circle mirror:

Three - block mirror:

Tamar, Danny and Amitay arrived together on Friday. All three had worked together on the staging while Tamar and Danny (who both live and work in Manhattan) were on holiday in Israel, then packed everything up, traveled to the US, and spent a further few days on the project in New York before coming to Chicago. They had worked through their ideas extensively, walking through the staging themselves, even buying mannequins to use in “blocking” the project. They were prepared.

8bb is used to working as a collaborative unit: having opinions, discussing, sometimes arguing, finding a workable solution, putting it into practice. Rare is it that we are explicitly told what to do. In this instance, however, Tamar, Danny and Amitay had a clear vision of what they wanted in the project, and weren’t very willing to compromise.

“Move here.”

“Now put your hand there.”

“Walk more ’staccato’.”

“React to their emotional ’sentence’.”

“You must be more laid back here.”

This was a completely understandable approach, considering the time constraints and their passionate views about the project. But it took us outside our comfort zone, and after the first day I, for one, was surprised, skeptical and perhaps even a little affronted.

There was a small language barrier during rehearsals. Amitay speaks solid but sometimes fragmentary English, and occasionally Tamar and Danny’s skills as translators were required.

The two main “protagonists” in the Mirrors project are clarinet (Mac) and violin (Alb). They sing and act a passionate love duet during the long slow movement (which takes up more than half the work). On stage they notice, ignore, court, seduce, and make passionate love to one other. Much of the rehearsal time was taken up exploring this relationship.

As we didn’t yet know the music from memory, much of the staging was created with us instrument-less, miming to a midi soundtrack. Here is the happy couple in front of the “circle mirror”:

In the piece, while this love duet is taking place, flute (my good self) and cello (the Phot) are the love duo’s “shadow”, providing a different angle on the same basic idea. So we noticed, ignored, cajoled, seduced then finally touched one another…

“You must caress each other. Here, touch him on the shoulder. No, better. Touch his flute, here. Touch it lightly. Now, you touch his cello, the strings, here. Maybe you can bring the bow like this.”

Did this intimate lovemaking bring Nick and I closer? Can we still remain friends? How can I see him every day at rehearsal, both of us unconvincingly pretending everything is “normal”?

By Sunday it became apparent that rear projection would be required. We were tripping all over the projector when it was placed directly in front of the screen, and the movements we had to make just to avoid it looked ridiculous.

The two run-throughs we did of the whole piece on Monday were greeted by the trio of creators with exceptional enthusiasm. The ensemble was a lot more relaxed and confident, and understood how much more effective and powerful the project looked from the audience, with screen in full view.

An exhausting but productive few days.

Here is Amitay (in the foreground):

You can see more photos from the rehearsals at our Flickr site here. Thanks to Tamar and the Duv for the ripper pics.