Sisters
for two dancers and computer
Choreography by Marie Brolin-Tani
1998
Pernille Fynne and Sophie Konning performing Sisters
Sisters is a music composition for two dancers and interactive computer
music system. Both dancers wear a DIEM Digital Dance Interface, a
hardware interface developed especially for interactive dance by Wayne
Siegel and Jens Jacobsen at DIEM as part of a research project. The
system measures the angles of various limbs on a dancer’s body and
converts this data to standard MIDI controller values. The computer
uses the data to control synthesis parameters. Software was designed by
the composer using the MAX MSP digital synthesis programming
environment. About fifty sound files are contained in the computer’s
RAM and these sound files are played back and altered in real time
using comb filter and resonance filter algorithms. The dancers control
playback and filter parameters in various ways during the course of the
piece, but there are no prerecorded sequences or tracks. All of the
sounds heard in the piece are produced as a direct reaction to the
dancer’s movements.
Each dancers controls four different sounds with her elbows and knees
at any given time. In some cases, the samples are looped and activity
levels of the elbows and knees are used to increases the volumes of the
sounds: the more the dancer moves, the more sound is heard. In other
cases the elbows and knees are used to control “scrub” functions in
much the same way that a tape can be slowly scrubbed forward and
backward over a tape head to create fast and slow playback both forward
and backward. For example, when a dancer moves her arm from straight to
bent a short sample will be played back. When the dancer moves the same
elbow from the bent position to straight, the same sound will be played
back backwards. Which sounds will be controlled by the dancers elbows
and knees and how they are controlled changes during the course of the
piece. In addition, the sounds are processed in real time by the
computer to create tonal material out of recorded noise-like sounds
such as water, fire, wind, breaking stones and wood, scraping gravel,
etc.
The choreography for Sisters was created by Marie Brolin-Tani first,
and the music was created to fit the choreography. Marie Brolin-Tani's
idea for the choreography was a work based on the life of the Mexican
artist Frida Kahlo. The two dancers represent two apects of the artist,
which might be described as the contrast between the masculine and the
feminine, or between physcial beauty and a sick and fragile body
dependent on "machines" to keep it alive. One of the costumes is
inspired by the corsette worn by Frida Kahlo, and the wires of the
interface are exagerated and made visible to the audience. The other
costume is more feminine and the interface is hidden. The composer’s
task was to create software that would produce sounds to accompany the
choreography. When rehearsals began, both the music and the
choreography were gradually developed and changed. Sisters was awarded
the Finalist Prize at the 1999 International Bourges Festival
