Duration: 30-40 minutes
For: laptop and voice
“[Cerulean’s] environmental music and soaring vocals, facilitate a hypnotic resonance, which allows the audience to collectively join in an ecstasy of self-reflection.” ThinkingDance.net (September 4th, 2023)
“What does it mean for the self to be doubled? How do you hold on to your humanity when, ultimately, you’re a refraction of another? SPIEGEL SPIEGEL is a postmodern ensemble-driven piece that utilizes found sound and contrasts artificial material with the organic. In this work, I attempt to examine effects of alienation that happens due to doubling through phrases and gesture work that deals with the questions of repetition and copying. SPIEGEL SPIEGEL attempts to juxtapose the real with the imaginary, the tactile with the wished-for.” – Madeline Shuron, choreographer
In writing the music for SPIEGEL SPIEGEL, I was fascinated by Madeline’s choreographic approach to improvisation, which directly mirrored the compositional approach I had taken while composing The Forest Inside You a few months prior. In SPIEGEL SPIEGEL, dancers learn specific motions, but may decide when and where they are performed within the moment. The resulting movement is both structured and spontaneous, with visual counterpoint emerging organically. However, this provides quite a challenge for accompaniment! How to score a dance that will never happen the same way twice? My approach was to create the score live by triggering pre-recorded loops and vocals. The musical material is fixed, but allows me to respond in the moment to the gestures and cues that I see. The result is a unique collaboration between motion and sound.