Auditory Turn: William Forsythe's Vocal Choreography

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Auditory Turn: William Forsythe's Vocal ChoreographyFreya Vass-Rhee

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To cite this Article Vass-Rhee, Freya(2010) 'Auditory Turn: William Forsythe's Vocal Choreography', Dance Chronicle, 33:3, 388 413

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Dance Chronicle, 33:388413, 2010Copyright C 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0147-2526 print / 1532-4257 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01472526.2010.517495

AUDITORY TURN: WILLIAM FORSYTHES VOCALCHOREOGRAPHY

FREYA VASS-RHEE

William Forsythes recent investigations of the sonic potentials of dance move-

ment have led him to generate improvisational modalities that extend dancing

into the bodys interior by means of translations between movement and vocal-ization. Analyzing visuo-sonic choreographic processes in Forsythes works De-creation (2003), You made me a monster (2005), Heterotopia (2006),and Yes we cant (2008) from a perspective informed by cognitive research,and focusing particularly on intermodal counterpoint, I argue that his turn to

the auditory extends his earlier investigations of perceptual performativity while

also complicating linguistically based dance analyses.

In November 1984, William Forsythe presented his first concertprogram as the new director of Ballett Frankfurt. The three-partevening, Audio-Visual Stress, consisted ofFrance/Dance, created oneyear earlier for the Paris Opera Ballet, Say Bye Bye, made in 1980for the Netherlands Dance Theater, and the 1984 film Berg AB.

France/Dance featured a sound collage of music by Johann Sebas-tian Bach, animal sounds, and text spoken by a dwarf moving be-tween cutouts of historic monumental buildings. Say Bye Bye jux-taposed the ensembles aggressive physicality with Stan Kentonsbrassy The Peanut Vendor, and paired raucous, screaming di-

alogue with the percussive music of Chinese New Year. As wasthe case with Forsythes G ange, created the preceding year for theFrankfurt company, theatergoers expecting the typical sights andsounds of ballet performance were surprised or even offended tohear dancers breaking the aural fourth wall, through which onlythe occasional hand clap or tambourine jingle typically passes.1

During Ballett Frankfurts two decades of existence, from1984 to 2004, Forsythe continued to produce works that trans-

gressed ballets traditional auditory barrier, challenging audiencesDates given in this article generally refer to premiere performances of works. How-

ever, many of Forsythes works have undergone repeated and often substantial reworking.Where pertinent, I indicate specific versions of works discussed.

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Auditory Turn: William Forsythes Vocal Choreography 389

with both their sonic and visual aspects. Forsythes aural compo-sitions from the Ballett Frankfurt period shared many of the per-formative aspects that distinguished his visual mise en sc enes: en-gaging thresholds of perception; saturating performance spaces with complex, competing information; and thwarting expecta-tions through unexpected juxtapositions, shifts or interruptions.The visual and aural composition of these works, at once highlychallenging and deeply musical, reveals intense choreographicscrutiny of the connections between seeing and hearing.

During the final years of Ballett Frankfurt, Forsythe beganto extend his research of dances aural dimensions by investigat-

ing the potential of using the dances own sounds. Works createdduring this period featured what Forsythe calls breath scores,2

whose elements include not only breath gestures but also foot-falls, sounds resulting from physical contact, and other soundsproduced by bodies in motion. By 2003 Forsythe and his ensemblehad developed improvisational paradigms in which the movementof dancing engendered fully vocalized sound. This integration ofvocal and kinetic performance continued through the 2005 clo-

sure of Ballett Frankfurt and the establishment of The ForsytheCompany. As I hope to show, the works produced by the ensem-ble during this period demonstrate a profoundly performativeaural-visual intermodality, or integration of perception across thesenses. Within complex, dynamic webs of structured relations thatemerge within and across the modes of vision and audition, theperformers produce sound and movement linked by the physicaland perceptual processes through which they are generated. Byacknowledging the muscular contiguity of the dancing bodys ex-ternal surface and vocal apparatus, and by probing the range ofimprovisatory interaction afforded by this contiguously conceivedbody, Forsythe has extended the corporeality of dancing in waysthat traverse the bodys inside-outside boundaries. This has en-abled exploration of dance as a visuo-sonic practice and choreog-raphy as an engagement with the intermodal potential of bodiesin motion.

Throughout Forsythes directorship of the Ballett Frankfurt

and The Forsythe Company, the ensemble has developed impro-visational methods and staging practices that not only challengethe perceptual abilities of performers and observers, but also, cru-cially, choreographically engage with perceptual inabilities. Heidi




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Gilpin has discussed the key role of failure in both the produc-tion and reception of Forsythes work, noting how the choreogra-phers abandonment of the fundamental classical ballet dictate ofbalance has enabled emergent movement composition and en-hanced visibility of dances ephemeral trace.3 Sabine Huschkaaptly refers to Forsythes choreographic practices as perceptualtechnologies: ways of structuring perception and movement thatrelocate ballets propositions in the unpredictable territory ofcorporeal perceptual processes.

I view Forsythes choreographicmethods as a continuous investigation of perceptual performativity:the capacity of the performance of perception to inform the en-

sembles movement research in practice as well as spectatorial ex-perience of dance events. The improvisational modalities andchoreographic structures developed by Forsythe and his ensem-ble confront the limits and proclivities of performers and audi-ence members perceptual performance, activating awareness ofthe perceptual conventions surrounding dancing, dance perfor-mance, and spectatorship.

The ensembles recent focus on visuo-sonic choreographic

intermodality constitutes the most recent stage in Forsythes ex-amination of the performative potentials of perception. In whatfollows, I focus specifically on the linkage of movement to vocallyproduced sound, referring to relevant research on intermodalperception, cognitive linguistics, performance theory, and literarystudies to show how Forsythe directs attention within and acrossthe senses not only to heighten audience focus but also to directattention to attention itself. Intermodal translation from dancegesture to vocal gesture and vice versa productively divides atten-tion; Forsythe has employed this strategy, along with others, todisrupt the bodys coherence and to facilitate the production ofimprovised movement and contrapuntal structure. Below, I detail

Sabine Huschka, Verloschen als asthetischer Fluchtpunkt oder Du musst dich selbst

wahrnehmend machen, in William Forsythe: Denken in Bewegung, by Gerald Siegmund(Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 2004), 96. My translation.Throughout this article I will be using two meanings of the word modality, the first refer-ring more generally to a particular mode of action, and the second, more specifically to a

particular form of perception. For example, improvisational modalities refers to the firstusage, whereas sensory modalities refers to the second.For a broad overview of Forsythes recent intermodal choreographic paradigms, see Freya

Vass-Rhee, Dancing Music: The Intermodality of The Forsythe Company, in WilliamForsythe, ed. Stephen Spier (New York: Routledge, forthcoming).




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how the distribution of dances sensory information across themodalities of vision and audition has offered the ensemble newperspectives on attention and new ways of researching perceptualperformativity.

When dancers translate movement into vocal sound,they repurpose the voicethe common conveyor of textualmeaningas a vector for an aural-visceral rendering of corpo-real significance. Dancing that re-sounds in this manner opens upa space in which to rethink the ways that dancing bodies con-vey meaning and to reflect on the centrality of vision and text indance research. I echo the call for an auditory turn, first made

in 1976 by postphenomenologist and philosopher of science andtechnology Don Ihde and recently reiterated by others, to arguefor a reappraisal of the ocularcentrismthat has historically governedresearch in the arts and humanities.4 Forsythes turn to the audi-tory highlights the sonic dimensions of dancing and their theatri-cal potential, as well as pointing to the effectiveness of a cognitiveapproach for their study.

Step, Inside: Translating Dancing and Dividing Attention

Forsythes choreographic methods are frequently based on suc-cessive procedural translations of movement, a concept rooted inhis re-viewing of classical ballet steps as sets of codified movementtasks and their subdivisions. In these translations, which Forsythehas referred to as algorithms, individual or multiple procedu-ral constraints offer potential movement parameters and allowperformers to develop complex improvisational modalities.5 Keyexamples include adding improvisational tasks or movement pat-terns to extant material, extracting or extrapolating individualconstraints, splitting group improvisations apart into solos, andcrashing together different movement structures. These oper-ations result in profusions of new physical states, forms, and dy-namics that serve Forsythe as resources for composing new pieces.Over time, works and sections of works develop reflexive physical-cognitive histories, to which the ensemble returns as they revise

the composition of the choreographies produced.Forsythe describes dance as a kind of musicmaybe a vi-

sual music, revealing an intuitive understanding of the com-mon physiological and cognitive ground shared by visual and




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aural perception. He reminds his dancers that sound is funda-mentally a product of movement: it begins when vibrating objectsset air molecules into motion and continues when these movingmolecules initiate a chain of motion in the organs of the ear.6 Atwork in the studio, Forsythe vocalizes constantly, generating au-ral images of his own or others movement.

This common prac-tice of onomatopoeic or ideophonic vocal reflection, in which vocalgestures (like pow and bling) describe object attributes (suchas size, constitution, position, movement, or the temporal struc-ture of events), reflects the embodied nature of sound perception.Similarly, we unconsciously temporally correlate speech prosody

(patterns of intonation, rhythm, and stress) with accompanyinghand and head gestures.7 We also make robust correspondencesacross percepts from different sensory modalities, such as the rela-tive brightness of sounds or warmth of colors, and reflect thesein synesthetic metaphors.8

Forsythe and his ensemble began to explore the vocal trans-lation of movement during the making of Decreation in 2003, awork based on Ann Carsons essay Decreation: How Women Like

Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil Tell God and herbook The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos. Car-sons analysis of Sapphos poem fragment 2 captures the visuo-sonic structure of attention among the poems subjects: Sapphoseems less interested in these characters as individuals than inthe geometric figure that they form. This figure has three linesand three angles. One line connects the girls voice and laughterto a man who listens close. A second connects the girl to Sap-pho. Between the eye of Sappho and the listening man runs athird. The figure is a triangle.9 The themes of self-annihilationand jealousy in Carsons essay and book prompted the ensembleto further elaborate the counter-rotational dynamics and disfo-cusing perceptual effects of extrapolated epaulement on whichForsythe had first focused in 1991, while creating the second

Forsythes vocal rendering of the dance action in One Flat Thing, reproducedcan be accessed

by toggling the audio settings of the works video score at the Synchronous Objects for OneFlat Thing, reproducedproject website at www.synchronousobjects.osu.edu/content.html#/fullVideoScore.Theodor Bergks numbering system.




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Figure 1. Hear the dance: David Morrow, Georg Reischl, Allison Brown, YokoAndo, and Christopher Roman in William Forsythes Decreation. Photograph byDominik Mentzos. Used with permission of The Forsythe Company.

version ofThe Loss of Small Detail.

The ensemble developed a rad-ical, emotionally driven corporeal dramaturgy based on complex,wringing counter-torsions of the entire body: limbs, spine, face,and eyes. Forsythe noted that this operation, in addition to con-founding proprioception, also deforms and reshapes the vocal ap-paratus: mouth, trachea, larynx, and diaphragm. When he askedthe dancers, What happens now when you exhale? the result wasa sonic rendering of the state of the bodya translation of move-ment into vocal sound.10 One is in fact hearing the dance in De-creation, to evoke Balanchines famous edict. (Figure 1) However,rather than reflecting an externally-produced musical composi-tion, the dancers torquing, writhing bodies become the sourcesof both dance movement and spasmodic, allied sound. The sub-tasks of this visual-aural translation could also be distributedamong watching, listening, and responding performers. In one of

Forsythes refiguring of the gaze in epaulement can be traced farther back, to the work Ar-

tifact (1984). See Dana Caspersen, Decreation: Fragmentation and Continuity, in WilliamForsythe, ed. Stephen Spier (New York: Routledge, forthcoming).




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Decreations final scenes, a female performer contorts in bouts oftwisted movement, watched by another female performer who sitswith her back to the audience, translating the movement phrasesinto wrenching, guttural sound. The works male protagonist com-pletes the translational triangle, slowly deciphering the phraseThis is the deal: you give me everything and I give you nothing.

The contiguous muscularity of this intermodal choreographycontroverts reifications of inside and outside boundaries of thebody, extending the action of dancing to the bodys sonorousinterior and re-presenting visibly perceptible dance via the auralperceptual channel. This mode of improvisatory composition con-

stitutes an innovative domain of not only the dancers physical vir-tuosity, but also their perceptual virtuosity. It demands a manifolddivision of attention and action from its performers across theexternal-internal spaces and temporalities of the body and acrosstheir own and other performers physical and sonic output. It isironic, then, thatDecreations visuo-sonic choreography is often in-terpreted in terms of physical or even mental disability.11

In subsequent works, Forsythes ensemble continued to elab-

orate the linkage between dance movement and vocalization, ex-tending the idea of kinetic isometry first developed with BallettFrankfurt in the late 1980s by conceiving of the vocal appara-tus as exquisitely responsive to movement generated virtually any-where in the body and refracted across its spaces.

This system,says Forsythe, takes a state of your whole body and connects itto your throat, such that the sum of the body is in your wind-pipe.12 For example, raising a heel from the floor produces whathe calls residual movement of the leg in space. Amplifying theresidual movement results in displacement of the hips, which inturn shifts fasciae between the hips and the rib cage, producingtensions differentially across the right and left ribs. Projecting themovement even farther compresses the lower lung and mobilizesthe diaphragm, constraining breathing and finally influencing themotion of the tissues of the neck, jaw, and lower face. This actionreshapes the trachea, buccal cavity, and finally the lips. Activating

Forsythe describes the concept ofkinetic isometryas learning to develop a feeling for trans-ferring the shape or form of one part of the body to another part, so, for example, thecurve of an arm might be translated onto the whole body or the line between waist andneck. Quoted in Roslyn Sulcas, Using Forms Ingrained in Ballet to Help the Body MoveBeyond It, New York Times, December 9, 2001, Arts and Leisure, 11, 42.




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the vocal chords during this process produces sound that providesa reflexive, self-generated accompaniment to the dancing.

Forsythe coupled this extrapolation of vocal sound frommovement with another choreographic operationthe trans-lation of visual scores into movementwhich the ensem-ble first elaborated in works like Limbs Theorem (1990) andALIE/N A(C)TION (1993). Such a coupling of tasks engenders aradical division of attention across vocal and kinetic modes of mo-tor production, as well as visual and auditory modalities of sen-sory reception, affording a rich performative experience for bothdancers and audiences. Forsythe deployed this manifold opera-

tion in the 2005 performance installation You made me a monster,an embodied study of love and grief created ten years after thepremature death of his wife, Tracy-Kai Maier. At the beginning ofthe work, audience members are asked to add pieces to the twistedsculptures of paper skeleton pieces on tables and the pencil trac-ings of the sculptures shadows that form the visual score for thework. After a short period, two male performers invade the in-stallations darkening space, reeling erratically as they read the

sculptural objects and responding with sound and movement totheir visual detail. The skeleton sculptures provide a daunting ar-ray of choices for navigating visual structure: they can be parsedlinearly or nonlinearly across their randomly connected pieces,and one can follow their surfaces or tunnel the vision throughtheir depths. Arriving at a stagelike area at one end of the room,a female performer joins the two men for a brief interval to trans-late paper shadow tracings placed on music stands.

In both trans-lational tasks, the performers divide their attention by convertingscore elements at multiple locations into movement and sound.Forsythe also instructs the performers to keep your drawing allover your body, in other words, to disperse their translation ofthe score elements across different corporal regions.13

In You made me a monster, the dancers vocal sounds join thevisual score to provide an additional emergent stream of informa-tion to which they can also respond. (Figure 2) Yet another auralstream is simultaneously created via a Max/MSP interface. As the

The improvisational tasks ofYou made me a monster are sometimes performed as a separate

installation called Monster Partitur. For this work, a large wooden wall covered with shadowtracings serves as the score.




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Figure 2. Singing the bones: David Kern translating the visual score of WilliamForsythes You made me a monster into movement and sound. Photograph by Juli-eta Cervantes. Used with the permission of The Forsythe Company.

dancers produce the vocal and danced translations of the twistedskeleton pieces and shadows, microphones worn on their fore-heads pick up their vocalizations and breaths, as well as the soundsof physical gestures, and filter them through voice-treatment pro-grams that composer-programmer Hubert Machnik tunes in realtime, altering, augmenting, and feeding the voices back into theperformance space. Each of the four programs, which Forsythecalls a set of virtual instruments that the dancers play with theirwhole bodies, responds to a distinct set of sound qualities withan idiosyncratic spectrum of pitches and timbres and a specificdelay and echo structure.14 The thundering, wailing, and chim-ing feedback of the Max/MSP programs doubles the works vocalcomponent, offering the performers an additional set of musicalvoices to which to respond with movement and/or sound.

Forsythe explains that the skeleton pieces, taken from a build-

it-yourself kit received as a Christmas gift by his terminally ill wife,are translations of three-dimensional bones into two-dimensionalpaper representations. The audience first reenacts as a groupForsythes own assembling of the paper pieces into a twisted




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three-dimensional model of grief, then the dancers translate thevisual artifacts into ephemeral performance.15 You made me a mon-ster enacts a wrenching, multisensory re-incarnation, fleshing outthe paper bones with muscle, sentience, movement, and harrow-ing lament. Acutely attuned to the environment through the de-mands of attention and action, and teetering intentionally at theedge of perceptual coherency, the performers offer a poignantvisuo-sonic image of the fear and sorrow unleashed when termi-nal disease alters bodies and lives.

You made me a monster exploits perceptual behavior, in all itsdynamic motivation, to stage a radical division of audience atten-

tion among performers movements and displacements, their liveand mediated voices, the shifting directions of their attention, andthe labyrinthine sculptures on which they focus. The audiencessearch for what performance theorist Hans-Thies Lehmann refersto as traces of connection16 is rooted in the so-called lowerlevel of sensory perception, which encompasses the immediatesense perception of the environment and the action that precedesand underpins higher reflective cognition. Theatrical attention,

like all attention, is guided by manifold cognitive goals and strate-gies of which we are commonly not consciously aware. These at-tentional strategies are the subject of research on intermodal per-ception, which aims to define the faculties that underpin our cog-nitive engagement with the world. Research in this area has shownhow the degree of intermodal congruency influences attentionto events. A few months after birth, humans are already sensitiveand attentive to the robustamodality (congruence of informationacross different senses) of everyday visual-aural phenomena, forexample, the redundant spatial, temporal, and kinesthetic infor-mation generated by fingers tapping a table.17As adults, however,we also respond to cognitive imperatives to discern patterns incomplex intermodal phenomena. In addition, our perception isguided by others attention to events. We remain highly sensitiveto gaze in adulthood, following early acquisition and refinementof the ability to read the focus of others interest from their vi-sual gaze.18 The intense attention of the performers in You made

me a monster provides vectors that guide the audiences search forlinkages between the rooms surfeit of visual and sonic informa-tion and the performers actions at the boundary of intention andincoherence.




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Finally, the architecture of the installations space adds a fur-ther division of attention for the audience by staging a very realdanger of collision. Viewers, trying to attend to the dancers er-ratic trajectories, actions, and sounds, must also attend to themovements of other spectators in the room as they make wayfor performers, skirt around the skeleton tables, and vie for po-sition near the stage space. The darkness of the room and theechoing multiplicity of the dancers voices destabilize observersability to locate performers, tables, and other spectators, henceheightening attention. In this way, the network of competing in-termodal information makes simultaneous and diverse perceptual

demands, threatening to overwhelm the senses of performers andaudience alike. The sensory inundation of You made me a mon-ster thus pushes performers and audience members to the edgeof perceptual performance, affording a visceral engagement withthe emotions of grief.

In summary, the visuo-sonic choreography developed byForsythe and his ensemble, by extending movement into the vo-calizing regions of the body, moves dancing across the perceptual

boundaries between visual and aural modalities. In doing so, itaffords access to the intermodal performativity of bodies in mo-tion. Forsythes compounding of dancers performance in multi-ple modes with translational methods of improvisation afforded anew way to take spectators and performers to the perceptual limitsthat have long served him as productive choreographic territory.You made me a monsters intermodal performance at the brink ofperceptual coherency taps the cognitive effects of dividing bothattention and action to underpin a physical dramaturgy of the in-comprehensible sadness of terminal illness. The dangerous com-mingling of mobile audience members and dancers reeling in re-sponse to surfeits of information further extends the impact of theperceptual performativity that is a hallmark of Forsythes largerbody of work.

(E)merge: Intermodal Counterpoint

Forsythe seeks to emphasize the phenomenological and embod-ied moment of the experience of dancing over reflective elabo-ration of narrative or conceptual meaning. As he remarks aboutperformance, The only valuable thing that is produced is the




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attention of the audience . . . and also the sense of desire. . . .Your attention, I want to steer itI want you to stop thinking andjust experience [the performance].19 The staging of spectatorialattention is a key factor in generating focus on the moment ofperformance. A principal means through which Forsythe accom-plishes this is by saturating environments with concurrent loci ofaction. Delineating simultaneity as a principal stylistic trait of post-dramatic theater and citing Forsythes work as exemplary in thisregard, Lehmann holds that the simultaneous presentation of amultiplicity of signs causes an inevitable parceling of perceptionthat engenders two responses in the spectator: opened perception

to the possibility of connections and relations, and to the appear-ance of clues at any given moment, due to the calm and rapidcontemplation simultaneity encourages; and inability to processthe totality of information presented and perceptual overstrain bythe effort to take in as much of it as possible. This overstrain elicitsan emotional response that is driven not by narrative content, butinstead by spectators engagement with the perceptual potentialof the performance environment itself.20

In Forsythes works, informational saturation occurs at boththe individual and ensemble level, with performers generatingcomplex systems of contrapuntal relations across different partsof their bodies as they move in complex spatial and temporal rela-tion to one another. Forsythe describes contrapuntal dance struc-ture, a key choreographic element that the ensemble first beganto investigate early in Ballett Frankfurts second decade, as oneway of providing organization without narration.21 He recognizesthe principle of counterpoint, commonly associated almost ex-clusively with music, as fundamental across all forms of art anddesign.

In music theory, counterpoint involves two distinct axes:one producing vertical or harmonic relationships among com-ponents, and another facilitating horizontal or dissonant rela-tionships, to some degree independent of one another. French lit-erary scholar Anne Holmes, exploring the structure of StephaneMallarmes poem LApres-midi dun faune from a musical per-spective in order to draw parallels between musical and literary

Forsythe and Synchronous Objects team members, in discussion with the author, Frankfurt

am Main, May 16, 2007. Forsythe is not alone in considering counterpoint a visual phe-nomenon. See, for example, Robert Enggass, Visual Counterpoint in Venetian SettecentoPainting, The Art Bulletin, vol. 64, no. 1 (March 1982): 8997.




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400 Dance Chronicle

forms, points out that the listener to musical counterpoint is en-couraged to listen horizontally, that is, to hear two or more sep-arate strands individually and, only when the distinctness of eachhas been registered by the mind, to consider their combined ef-fect vertically.22 Similarly, English literary scholar Hilda Hollis,analyzing the counterpoint of rhythm and meaning in GerardManley Hopkinss poem The Windhover, notes, The conceptof counterpoint directs us to see contradiction rather than imma-nent meaning.23 Such views highlight how counterpoint dividesattention between percepts and between differing means of pars-ing structure.

Forsythes contrapuntal dance structures subsume numerousaspects of his re-envisioning of the conventions of classical ballet,including its insistence on verticality, codified configurations ofrotated limbs, spatial organization of steps, and a close relation be-tween movement and music.24 However, the improvisational pos-sibilities of differentially coordinating the distinct mechanics, tra-jectories, and dynamics of simultaneous movement events are notunique to ballet but inhere in all codified movement forms. In

Forsythes work, temporal, spatial, and dynamic linkages amongmovement events take the form of hookups, or concurrent se-quential relations occurring either within individual bodies oracross those of ensemble members. In rehearsal, Forsythe opti-mizes contrapuntal complexity by fine-tuning balances among dis-sonant and consonant relational possibilities and by encouragingsome translational variance in the dancers responses. Perform-ers attend to the forms and dynamics of movements and to thetiming of structures resulting from specific task constraints, re-sponding in ways that, critically, exhibit varying degrees of spa-tial, temporal, or dynamic linkage with other single or multipleevents. They also ensure that they offer contrapuntal opportuni-ties to others in the ensemble as they move. The performers takeparticular care to insert pauses in the flow of action, which notonly provide other performers with time to respond, but also cre-ate phrasal or musical structure in the flow of events. (Forsytheoften notes that the critique he most frequently gives the ensem-

ble is, Dont forget to stop.) Within the parameters of their im-provisational tasks, the ensemble thus produces a range of valuesbetween quasi-congruency and pronounced incongruity, and be-tween immediate and delayed response. This creates a zone of




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performance constrained by tacit, shared perception of events, within which actions, while diverging parametrically from theirreferents, nevertheless still afford discernment of structural co-herence.

The Forsythe Company has continued to explore the linkageof contrapuntal dance movement to the movement vocalizationpractices initiated in works like Decreation and You made me a mon-ster. In recent works, performers produce both sound scores andmovement scores, structuring improvisational intermodal coun-terpoint as individuals and as an ensemble immersed in com-plex arrays of visual and sonic information. The installation-

performance Heterotopia, which premiered in Zurich in 2006, isa virtuoso exercise in the generation of contrapuntal intermodal-ity. This work, which Forsythe has referred to as both a concertand an oratorio, is performed in a two-room space that effec-tively optimizes opportunities to combine movement and soundproduction. The room through which the audience enters con-tains a large square grid of fifty-six unevenly aligned tables, whosearrangement offers several holes, small thrust spaces, and raised

ridges. The performers move within and around this table constel-lation, performing and conducting through their movementsan ensemble sound composition comprised of a broad range ofpseudo-speech, animal noises, and vocal punctuations reflectingmovement, architectural forms, or other sounds in the room. Inthis first room microphones on stands and attached to the ta-bles pick up vocal and ambient sounds and convey them intothe almost-empty adjoining second room via a large bell speaker.Muted sounds can also pass between the two rooms through afloor-to-ceiling screen barrier that separates them. The area be-neath the tables in the first room, fitted in places with mirrors,constitutes a third, silent space of torpid, mechanical movement.Composer Thom Willems adds an understated live accompani-ment of shimmering tones and intermittent synthesizer gesturesfrom the sound booth.

The front orchestra room, as Forsythe calls it, visually dis-plays the performers ofHeterotopias sound score (with the excep-

tion of Willems) in an installation-like setting (Figure 3). Mostmembers of the ensemble employ several vocal registers in thecourse of the performance: Jone San Martin, for example, uttersnonce words in a raspy, guttural timbre as well as her normal voice,




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Fig

ure

3.

Intermodalcounterpo

int:DavidKern,FrancescaCaroti,andAnderZabala(fo

reground);JoneSanMartin

and

ChristopherRoman(back

ground)inWilliamForsyth

esHeterotopia.

Photograph

byStephanBurianek.

Used

with

thepermissionofTheForsytheCompany.

402




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while Roberta Mosca produces high, sustained whistles and con-vincing but completely fake Russian dialect. The back room, bycontrast, offers a more conventional theatrical arrangement ofperformers dancing to accompanying sound in a black-box set-ting before an audience seated on risers. Two of the three objects in this roomthe bell-shaped speaker emitting the frontrooms sounds and a piano that remains untouched throughoutthe eveningtacitly prompt consideration of the works soundscore as music, while ironically evoking the distinction betweenlive and mediated performance. The third object, a long rib-bon coiled on the floor, becomes a swirling, cracking audio-

visual instrument played during an extended solo late in theperformance.

Heterotopias informational sources and improvisational tasksare concatenated in intricate networks of cause and effect, scat-tered across the installations spaces, objects, and bodies. In onescene, for example, a dancer on the tabletops in the first roomperforms a silent improvised solo that visually conducts a vocal-and-movement trio of performers standing in holes between the

tables. Two of the three dancer-vocalizers respond with contra-puntal sounds, which they physically translate into movement.The trios third member uses the overall vocal score to guide hisselective reading in movement and voice of an alphabet of blackletters, which another performer moves into constantly chang-ing, pseudo-word formations. In another hole, yet another dancerperforms a solo, eyes closed, in which she tries to avoid mov-ing simultaneously with the third trio member by focusing onhis voice and moving only when she senses that he has stopped.

The sounds of this front-room scene, emanating from four voiceslinked by differing degrees of agency and counterpoint, per-formers movements, and Willemss subtle score, issue from thebowl-shaped speaker in the back room, where they serve as mu-sic for a silent trio of performers there. The physically shifting,contrapuntal action and sound, coupled with the audiences lib-erty to move around the perimeter of the performance space,

As with many of Forsythes works, the exact specifications of the improvisational tasksin Heterotopia have changed over the history of the works performance. The task seriesdescribed here was altered somewhat in 2008, two years after the works premiere.




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motivate attendees to optimize their visual and auditory perspec-tives, choosing between the two rooms and among the multipletargets of monomodal and intermodal attention available at anymomentincluding other spectators gazes, postures, vocal orgestural responses, and perambulations.

Simultaneity clearly pervades Heterotopia, with its multiplicityof spaces, voices, and centers of visual action. The works inter-modal counterpoint, however, permits a reappraisal of Lehmannspresentation of the concept of theatrical simultaneity, in the ex-periencing of which, he notes, A systematic double-bind arises:we are meant to pay attention to the concrete particular and at

the same time perceive the totality. The spectator is deliberatelymade aware of the fragmentary character of perception that ev-eryday conscious experience typically disavows. Confronted by anunavoidable apportionment of perception and, in the absenceof informing narrative, spectators structure their own experiencethrough selective attention to events. However, as Lehmann ex-plains, this organizing process remains an aesthetic of meaningin retreat, since it requires observers to focus on individual units

of structure within the staging and to defer reflection on meaningto a later time.25 Lehmanns analysis agrees with those of Holmesand Hollis, who also note how contrapuntal structure encouragesfocus on immediate events, delaying holistic processing of thelarger event.

Cognitive semiotician and aesthetics scholar Per AageBrandts theory of the neuro-semantic economy of meaning con-struction departs in some important ways from Lehmanns un-derstanding of simultaneity in aesthetic perception. In Brandtsmodel, meaning is organized on five nonhierarchical strata,to which we can attend selectively or simultaneously: sensation(qualia),

perception (objects), apperception (situations), reflec-tion (notions), and affect (emotions). Thus, the processes of or-ganizing meaning do not constitute linear, integrative assemblylines that culminate over and over again at the level of abstractor reflective thinking. Instead, Brandt claims, mental construc-tion is sloppy, involving overlays of attention that occur in orders

that are not strict. Critically, for aesthetic perception, this mental

Philosophers use the term qualia to refer to the subjective mental experience of sensory

qualities, such as the redness of red, the taste of cherries, or the pain of a pinprick.




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economy involves excesses of perceptual material that, remainingunelaborated, are not integrated into higher-order strata. Brandtclaims that this excess material, which calls for completion by virtue of its lack of integration, is experienced as particularlysalient within the aesthetic context.26 This notion of simultane-ous organization of meaning across different levels of cognitioncomplicates Lehmanns view of spectators search for connectionsand inability to parse the totality of events. On the other hand,Brandts emphasis on the salience of input-level information res-onates with Holmess and Holliss notions of how counterpointdirects focus to the emergent, phenomenal structuring of events.

In Forsythes translational modalities, counterpoint can be ei-ther intramodal, involving purely visual or sonic linkages, or in-termodal, with vocal gestures reflecting rhythmic, dynamic, struc-tural qualities of movements, or vice versa. Importantly, our pars-ing of intermodal counterpoint involves two separate sensorychannelsthe visual and the auralwith only the visual channelrequiring overt physical action owing to the limited spatial scopeof the visual apparatus. In other words, seeing is primarily a serial

process necessitating movement of the eyes and head and relin-quishing one target of attention in favor of another; our ears, bycontrast, are fundamentally global receivers, favoring no particu-lar point of view.27 Intermodal visual-aural perception thus runsin parallel, integrating information from a more active, mobilesensory system and a more passive, relatively stationary one.

While intermodal counterpoint simultaneously directs atten-tion to the particular and the holistic aspects of event structureas Lehmann claims, it also creates a different kind of doublebind in which dual-channeled intermodal attention must com-pete with the serial process of visual target selection. Forsythesstaging of diverse contrapuntal modalities provides performers with precisely honed ranges of improvisational choices. The in-termodal and intramodal choices the performers make, in turn,evoke shifts and overlaps in the ways that audience members al-locate their attention. This heightens perceptual awareness andcontributes to what Lehmann, referring to a term used by Sig-

mund Freud, delineates as an evenly hovering attention (gleich-schwebender Aufmerksamkeit) that remains open for potential con-nections among any sources or along any dimensions.28 Finally,by staging a mobile and visible audience around four sides of the




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table grid and across the two rooms, Heterotopia, like You made me amonster, scales up audience attention from covert observation intoovert action, staging their performance of perception in tandemwith that of the performers, and, in doing so, dividing audienceattention yet again.

Forsythes intermodal deployment of theatrical and chore-ographic simultaneity does not merely confront audiences withcomplexity or speed at the limits of perception. Dividing atten-tion between atomistic and holistic qualities of presentation, in-termodal counterpoint strategically intensifies performer and au-dience perception by choreographically merging the activities of

sensing within and across modes. This invites attention to boththe composition of the works and the dual performances of per-ception, engendering an inherently reflexive performance of per-ception in observers. Intermodal counterpoint thus constitutes ahighly refined extension of Forsythes inquiry into the perceptual-performative economies of postdramatic theater.

Sensing Meaning, Moving Theory

Thus far, I have described task strategies developed by Forsytheand his ensemble for translating between movement and sound,offering a cognitive approach for analyzing their performative ef-fects. The visual-aural scores ofYou made me a monster, Heterotopia,and similar works interrogate commonly accepted distinctions be-tween choreography and improvisation, between the bodys inte-rior and exterior, and between vision and audition. In this section,I argue that they stage a deconstruction of the linguistic and mu-sical qualities of vocal utterances, and, by complicating the per-ception of language and action, challenge assumptions about theways that bodies project meaning.

Forsythe directly addresses the theme of comprehensibility inYes we cant, which was first performed in 2008 at the FestspielhausHellerau in Dresden.

Through a shrewd mix of vocal and physicaltruncation, multilingual speech, word and movement play, non

On April 16, 2010, Forsythe produced a completely new version of Yes we cant that was

performed in Barcelona, Spain, and subsequently in Koln, Germany. The descriptions ofaction, text, and dramaturgy herein refer to the version performed during the works firsttwo seasons.




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sequitur, and dark verbal and physical innuendo, this work di-rectly confronts spectatorial desire to understand meaning. More-over, it undercuts the dominance of discourse, which historicallysubordinates bodies in action to the texts that are produced aboutthem. Forsythe has said that the works title addresses the de-mand audiences place on artists to explain themselves, notingthat works are read for content or meaning by general or spe-cialized theater audiences, each of which has its own interpretiveagenda, and are deemed more or less valuable based on the set ofcriteria imposed for such interpretation.29 In the opening sectionof Yes we cant, vocal roars are interspersed with tense, fragmen-

tary actions, with the dancers spitting fragments of speech at on-stage microphones as they are whipped past them in the course ofrapid, disjointed movements. In a later scene, a performer wrylyencourages the desire to understand, lasciviously coaxing the au-dience to Make a wish. . . . Yes, you cant! . . . Come on, take it outof the box. . . . Later, another performer pointedly quizzes the au-dience about the topic of the work, which he blithely reveals to becake.

The ensembles vocal performances in earlier works had crit-ically commented on the assumed communicative superiority oftext. For example, in Decreation and Heterotopia dance action istranslated into sound that is lexically incoherent but nonethelesscomprehensible as language by virtue of the nonverbal compo-nents of speech: gesture, prosody, temporal structure (durationand rate of utterances and pauses), volume, pitch, timbre, and in-flection, as well as paralanguageculturally delineated nonverbal vocal signals such as back-channel cues (like mm-hm), laugh-ter, sighing, snorting, and coughing. These works offer up theatextual body in action, a body whose efforts, experiences, and in-tentions we recognize in and through our own. The interplay ofcoherent and incoherent utterance in Yes we cant takes mattersa step farther by pointing out how our construction of meaning,although guided by human linguistic capacities, is fundamentallyrooted in our embodied and situated comprehension of events

Gesture and proxemics are also considered to be paralinguistic components of commu-

nication. For further consideration of paralanguage, see, for example, Fernando Poyatos,

Nonverbal Communication Across Disciplines, vol. 2: Paralanguage, Kinesics, Silence, Personal andEnvironmental Interaction(Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002).




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and behavior. In short, Forsythes return to text in Yes we cant po-sitions the work as a foil to the vocal paradigms elaborated in De-creationand Heterotopia.

The vocality of Forsythes intermodal choreographies, in ad-dition to stimulating reflection on the bias that privileges textualover embodied understanding, also provokes a reconsideration ofthe practice of translating dance performances into textual, the-oretical perspectives. In particular, it encourages interrogation ofthe tendency of linguistically motivated models of dance studiesto implicitly devalue perceptual experience in favor of language-based comprehension. Forsythes atextual vocality and its inter-

modal translations assert the communicative power of the mov-ing body in dance performance while simultaneously questioningdances readability.

While the metaphoric use of the term reading within the hu-manities commonly delineates the application of critical theoryin order to interpret implicit meaning couched in artworks andcultural phenomena, a cognitive approach re-considers reading asan act of sensory-perceptual engagement. Cognitive film theorist

David Bordwell, in a 1989 essay, Why Not to Read a Film, takes astaunch position against interpretive conventions, calling on crit-ical analysts to devote more attention to the surfaces of films.30

Although not highly influential at the time of its publication,Bordwells critique anticipated the current sensory turn in hu-manistic studies and the burgeoning of interest in cognitive ap-proaches to the study of the arts and literature.

Cognitive literary theorist Howard Mancing advances Bord- wells argument by drawing a firm distinction between the per-ception of events in the world and the reading of texts: Per-ceiving and knowing something is simply not the same thing asreading and knowing something. Perceptual understanding, theprimary cognitive mode in nature, is not at all linguistic, and bydefinition it cannot involve reading.31 For Mancing, the theo-retical predilection to read performances perpetuates the pri-macy of verbally expressed over sensory, affective, and kineticknowledge. He argues that, while reading narrative text is an es-

sentially diegetic experience, in which readers creatively imagineas they read, theatrical performances are embodied, multisensoryevents that are tangibly present for audiences. The experiencingof films or theatrical performances, in other words, fundamentally




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requires both vision and audition of physical phenomena at themoment of exposure. In the act of reading, however, the eyes donot actually see the events of the narrative, but rather, letters andwords on a page. Similarly, any sounds evoked by reading occurvia the creative imagination rather than via the aural channel.32

Audiences of Forsythes visually scored modalities, such asthose in You made me a monster or Heterotopia, see and hear perform-ers in the act of score-reading. Given that their readings result invocal utterances, it seems logical to consider these modalities in-stances of oratory performance. However, Forsythes voiced danc-ing in these works specifically elides the textual aspects of speech

while retaining the embodied action of the voice. For example,in Heterotopia, performers read letters and nonce words and trans-late them into streams of vocal sound and dance movement. How-ever, the words and sounds produced as visual or sonic artifacts donot constitute actual language. The performers nonetheless stagedialogues in which the structure and tenor of communication isclear and concrete.

The nonce words formed on the tables andthe monologues and conversations constructed by the performers

afford comprehension at the level of the embodied experience ofspeaking and moving. Importantly, this comprehension, if it oc-curs, does so in the absence of text. Forsythe essentially divorcestextual content from its assumed crucial role in communicationby demonstrating how the action of the body and the nonver-bal parameters of speech are capable of producing and sustainingcommunication by themselves.

The sounds produced by the dancers in these works are thusmore aptly understood as vocalizations rather than orations. Liter-ary historian and linguist Paul Zumthor offers a useful distinctionbetween orality, the functioning of the voice as the bearer of lan-guage, and vocality, the whole of the activities and values that be-long to the voice as such, independently of language (italics mine).33

Roland Barthes, borrowing Julia Kristevas terminology, similarlydistinguishes between the singers pheno-song (content compo-nents) and geno-song (sonorous, diction-based qualities). ForBarthes, the grain of the voice, specifically, evokes in the listener

During rehearsals for Heterotopia in September and October of 2006, several dancers who

conversed in nonce dialects noted an uncanny sense that they and their conversation part-ners fully understood not only the emergent timbre but also the specific content of theirdiscussions.




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a sensual engagement with the body of the singer: The grain isthe body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb asit performs. Farther on, referring to music without text, he says,leaving aside the voice, the grainor the lack of itpersistsin instrumental music; if the latter no longer has language to layopen significance in all its volume, at least there is the performersbody which again forces me to evaluation.34

Forsythes intermodal choreographies are dancing music thatextends dance into the other, inner spaces of the body, translat-ing the grain across the senses of vision and audition. Throughperformative linkages of kinetic and sonic action, the perform-

ers visibly and audibly express the lived experience of their danc-ing. The body, so often silent in dance performance, is enabled tospeak for itself and does so on its own terms, asserting its role inthe construction of meaning and inverting the hierarchy of lan-guage and perceptual experience. Such dancing voices demandconsideration within discourses about the works; they also call foranalysis that proceeds across sensory modalities.

A cognitive approach offers a valuable opportunity to reassess

and perhaps even retool extant and developing theories of artmaking and reception. Forsythes recent intermodal dance re-search re-cognizes the acts of dance production and performanceby foregrounding the multisensory experience of dancing. Ulti-mately, as do others who have turned to the auditory, I believe thata rebalancing of the ideological power of the different senses, al-though desirable, merely perpetuates a nonintegrated view of hu-man perceptual experience. An intermodal approach to the studyof perception and (inter)action (with)in the world interrogatesthe dichotomy between visual and auditory experience, fosteringawareness of the connectedness of the senses.35

Forsythes works have often made powerful commentariesabout perceptual proclivities and limits, while promoting dancemaking and dance performance as resources for the study ofhuman perception. His incorporation of the sounds of dancingreintegrates the senses in ways that continue to interrogate theconcept of danceconceiving of the perception of movement as

an intermodal experience, extrapolating vocal performance intoimprovisational paradigms, and researching the perceptual po-tentials of theatrical events. The ensembles intermodal chore-ography thus carries forward Forsythes career-long project of




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Auditory Turn: William Forsythe's Vocal Choreography

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