The performing body, the sculptural body, the body as subject. Just as machines break down, bodies break down, fail. Drop operates at the intersection of these ideas of ‘body.’ It is an active proposition. Drop, topple, plonk, drag, droop, lie, sprawl, rest, pause, float, stop, drip. Drop is a dance, and water is the body. Drop is a dance that embodies contrary impulses of control and abandon. A machine has control, a drop only has direction. Combine them. Site recordings and performed sounds mean listening happens twice, on capture, and again while looking. The site recordings are from the lakes and the rivers and the creeks. The dance is for the lakes and the rivers and the creeks.
The dance of Drop operates with a pair of rope spooling machines and push-pull machines working together. The scores determining movement are derived from some key 1970s pieces by American choreographer Trisha Brown, where she variously incorporated equipment to expand the limits of a dancer’s address to gravity; developed scores that incorporated systems of cumulative repetition; and choreographed movements that, while deliberate and timed, were intended to appear at times wholly improvisational. The dance of Drop, building on Brown’s systems-based choreography, moves from casual gesture to drastic plummet, writing the unexpected through the language of machine logic, delivering an endlessly satisfying surprise, time and time again.
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MARLA HLADY draws, makes sculpture, works with sites and sounds and sometimes makes video. Hlady’s kinetic sculptures and sound pieces often consist of common objects that are expanded and animated to reveal unexpected sonic and poetic properties often using a system-based approach to composition. She’s shown widely in solo and group shows including SFX Seoul 2019, Manif D’Art 6 (Quebec City), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo, NY), Oakville Galleries (Toronto), YYZ Artist’s Outlet (Toronto), Klink and Bank (Reykjavik, Iceland), New General Catalog (Brooklyn), the Art Gallery of Calgary, Apexart Gallery (New York), Museo di San Domenico (Imola, Italy), The Power Plant Gallery (Toronto), The Nunnery (London, England). She has mounted site works in such places as the fjords of Norway, a grain silo as part of the sound festival Electric Eclectic, an apartment window in Berlin, a tour bus in Ottawa. Recent collaborations include artist Christof Migone, musician Eric Chenaux, choreographer-dancer Shannon Cooney. She currently lectures in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media (University of Toronto at Scarborough) and is Graduate Faculty in Visual Studies (Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto).
Movement Scores
1. Accumulation (Repeat) – 1 action is repeated 5 times before the next new action is added (1 5x, 1+2 5x, 1+2+3 5x, etc.). Start at the floor and end at the ceiling. [after Trisha Brown’s Accumulation, 1971]
2. Stand and Wait – reset and stand still with bag bottom on the floor. [after Trisha Brown’s Structured Pieces]
3. Drop – lift to the ceiling, drop to the floor, then reset. [after Trisha Brown’s Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, 1970 and Woman Walking Down a Ladder, 1973]
4. Locus Line (Bile) – lift or drop to specific locations using the word bile (where a specific location cor-responds with a letter of the alphabet). [after Trisha Brown’s Locus, 1975]
5. Accumulation (Single) – 1 action is added to the next action with no repetition (1, 1+2, 1+2+3, etc.). This time stays horizontal, close to the floor. [after Trisha Brown’s Primary Accumulation, 1972]
6. Locus Line (Blood) – go to specific locations using the word blood (where a specific location corre-sponds with a letter of the alphabet). [after Trisha Brown’s Locus, 1975]
7. Locus Line (Water) – go to specific locations using the word water (where a specific location corre-sponds with a letter of the alphabet). [after Trisha Brown’s Locus, 1975]
Sound:
1. Tiny/Nottawasaga Bay on Georgian Bay near Tiny, Ontario.
A recording, performing session on the shores of Nottawasaga Bay using a hydrophone (a microphone that can be put directly into water) and a stereo microphone. The process continued in the studio where bowed, amplified objects gated Nottawasaga Bay sounds.
NOTE: An audio or noise gate controls when, to what degree, and how long audio is allowed to be heard. In this instance, it is amplified metal objects sounded with a cello bow that is controlling the Nottawasaga Bayfield recordings.
2.-3. Christina Lake in the Monashee Mountains near Grand Forks in the Kootenay Boundary Region, B.C..
A recording, performing session on a floating dock with a swimmer wearing a mask and snorkel. The dock is recorded both with a geophone (a contact microphone used to record low subsonic vibrations) and a stereo microphone, while the swimmer’s breathing and other underwater sounds are recorded with a hydrophone.