collaboration with Trace Dance Practice

I have been collaborating with dancers for over 30 years as a composer and performer and also an accompanist for dance training and technique. I would safely estimate that the number of dance classes I have accompanied with live improvised music is in the thousands and rising!

Back in the 90s dancer Aimee Dawn Robinson and I met as students at YORK University in Toronto. I was performing with the school’s Dance Ensemble and accompanying classes in exchange for a 4th year credit in a “Fine Art” course requirement. Little did I know that this would be an extremely influential time that opened up a facet of my career that I never considered prior.

Aimee has spent decades making dances all over the world, and we recently reconnected through the social media videos she posts as part of her ongoing Trace Dance Practice project (www.tracedancepractice.com).

Last weekend we met up in London, Ontario and improvised in a frozen swamp. We shot video and recorded the audio and each went home and created our portion of the video seen here. All of the music was created by manipulating my swamp percussion performance recording.