Last night Tom Nunn returned to the Center for New Music (C4NM) with three of his invented instruments. This was his latest program of accompanying Christina Braun performing her own solo choreography, entitled What are the Chances. Braun has been heavily influenced by Butoh techniques, most evident through her consummate skill in summoning up grotesque facial expressions, many of which can been found in the depiction of demons and tyrants in traditional Asian art forms, particularly those from Japan. However, those threatening demeanors were coupled with a highly imaginative sense of body geometry, often summoning up shapes of intricate balance that might collapse like a house of cards if executed by any other dancer.
Nunn brought three of his instruments to accompany the six dances that Braun created. Most of his work involves exploring rhythms through the manipulation of objects with different physical properties. In the past those objects were laid out in a pattern that would facilitate performing particular rhythms within or on top of a rectangular area resulting in what Nunn calls a skatchbox. For last night’s performance he brought three instruments, each with its own novel approach to design.
The Giant Skatchwheel exchanges a 33”-diameter circular sheet of cardboard for the rectangular surface of a skatchbox. As in the skatchbox, everyday physical objects of different material types and textures are mounted on the sheet and then stroked by comb-like objects. The sheet may be placed on a turntable and played while it is motion, or the performer may strike the objects with one hand while moving the wheel with the other. Each of these techniques was used, respectively, for two of Braun’s dances, “Roulette” and “A Roundabout Way.” The Skatchplate involves similar objects. However, the instrument is static; so performing it is very much in the same spirit of playing a skatchbox.
The major departure from the “skatch” genre is the Crustacean. This consists of a circular stainless steel plate, roughly the same size as the Giant Skatchwheel. A variety of bronze objects of different shapes rise from this surface and are stroked with small violin bows. This makes for a variety of subtle reverberating metallic sonorities, which usually requires amplification.
Christina Braun explores her sense of balance accompanied by Tom Nunn playing his Crustacean (screen shot from the video of the performance being discussed)
The otherworldliness of these instruments perfectly complemented Braun’s unconventional approaches to human movement. Indeed, one frequently got the impression that Braun had planned out most, if not all, of her choreography, while Nunn’s performance may have involved improvised responses to what he saw her doing. Mind you, there is a good chance that considerable rehearsal went into preparing this performance; but there was still an invigorating sense of spontaneity in Nunn’s techniques for engaging with his instruments.
The entire performance lasted about 40 minutes and is now available for viewing on a YouTube upload.
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