Artists:
Linda Lehovec, choreography
John Toenjes, music
Dancers:
Linda Lehovec
Heather Klopchen
Musicians:
John Toenjes, keyboard and laptop computer
Robin Kearton, viola
Artist Bios:
Linda
Lehovec is an
Associate Professor at the University of Illinois (UIUC).
She holds a BFA
from The Juilliard School, and an MFA from UIUC.
Linda has performed her own works, both solo and with her company, Linda Lehovec
and Dancers, in Canada, San Francisco, Seattle,
Chicago and De-troit. She was awarded an Illinois Arts Council
fel-lowship in Choreography in 2000 and
2002. Linda Lehovec & Dancers’ pro-ject, Swim, was performed in Chicago,
Wisconsin and Minnesota
in fall 2002.
Heather
Klopchin is an Assistant Professor of Dance at St. Olaf College.
Robin Kearton is the Director of the Urbana Community Center for the Arts and a frequent per-former in the Champaign-Urbana, IL area.
Mangle on the Fly is a work that explores the notion of the music
and the dance being so intertwined that one literally cannot exist without
the other. The structure of the music depends on what the dancers are dancing,
and the structure of the choreography depends upon what the musicians are
playing.
Mangle on the Fly is a changeable, cooperative dance that is different
every night. The dance and
music both are
constructed
on
a series
of
loops, during
or over which short “one-shot hits” and more lengthy improvisations
are danced or played. The order and length of the loops is determined by
the flow of the performance, and the improvisations come in response to each
other’s
moment-by-moment interpretations.
Because of the interactive nature of this
dance, the dancers and musicians worked very closely in rehearsal to create
the piece, and they need to be closely communicating during the performance.
The music is for amplified viola and keyboard played through a series of
looping devices and effects, either dedicated hardware units or software
in a laptop
computer. The loops are recorded on the fly and they are manipulated and
switched on and off as the course of the dance unfolds. The musicians also
provide
a bit of acoustic percussion with their feet on amplified boxes.
Performances:
Nov.
2003, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (premiere)
Nov.
2003, Beloit College
March 2004, Wayne
State University/University of Utah (real-time internet video stream)
Performance inquiries:
Mangle on the Fly is avai-lable for performance. We can also do workshops and lecture demonstra-tions with your community or students. Also, a DVD is available of the dance. It includes two versions, one with, and
one without, titles that highlight the in-teractive
elements of the
dance. Contact me to re-quest a copy, and to sche-dule a performance and/or other activities revolving around this dance.
