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MusicDance • Interdisciplinary Art • Sal Sofia

Interdisciplinary

These two music dance excerpts are from the live performance of the "Places in Spaces" Exibit, produced and choreographed by artist Kim Shipp MFA, at California Institute of the Arts 1998. "She commissioned me to compose several electronic compositions for her Graduate exibition. The Exibit was compelling well created and thoughtfully produced."



"Places in Spaces"

Producer / Choreographer

Kim Shipp

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This composition was written for a group of dancers that are reminiscing the working day of a woman's life in an African village. A Working Day depicts a peaceful place in Africa surrounded by trees and water streams recreated by sounds as natural as possible using bamboo flutes and percussive metallic sounds, implements that very probably are used in the working day of a native. There is a repetitive fluid motion throughout the work to portray not only the simplicity and toil of work but also the serenity and security that is home and fulfillment.

Interestingly, this composition was used to accompany an installation Over-hung for three dancers suspended in air by straps portraying through fluid motion the impression as if they were underwater. Though "A Working Day" was composed for a different scenario, as Morton Subotnick would say, you can get a dancer and a music composition totally foreign to each other and the result can be a beatiful match.

A Working Day (Over-hung)   [ 6:16 ]


Dancers: Oren Barnoy, Tray Hsiang, Melissa Spooner.

Music Copyright © 1998 (Sal Sofia) SASP. (ASCAP)

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Night Silent is a composition based on a young woman who is trapped in a crystal cube, the crystal cube representing her world. The sounds that are heard throughout the piece projects all that is going on in the young woman's mind. The woman fights against herself and against her world struggling to get out and see another world and experience other situations. But, the struggle to be free is too great and in the end she just gives up hope and futilely stays in the crystal cube. This work incorporates a vertical progression of voice-like fatigued sounds with subtle dramatics dynamics to convey the convoluted workings of the unconscious.

Night Silent (Human) [ 6:17 ]


Dancer: Phithsamay Linthahane.

Music Copyright © 1998 (Sal Sofia) SASP. (ASCAP)

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Credits: All compositions are written and arranged by Sal Sofia. All computer synthesis programming, percussion, sound design, signal processing are created by Sal Sofia with Csound sound/signal synthesis program, SoundHack spectral audio processing, and Snd sound editor. Graphic design: SASP