Wayne State University Dance Studio Collaborations

Each year at Wayne State University, the music composition majors are paired up with a dance major and given roughly three weeks to compose music to fit the dancer’s choreography. Below are two of my collaborations.

Look (2019)

Choreography by Dominique Denson

Dominique sparked this collaboration with a simple prompt: write something with trumpet and drums. The end result imagines if "Bolero" were written by Duke Ellington, along with an off-kilter Dilla beat and a touch of that southwestern Ennio Morricone vibe. The title “Look” refers to seeing another side of a person that one does not normally get to witness.

Room (2018)

Choreography by Ashley Taravella

Ashley’s choreography depicts the safe space of one's own room, so I started by recording sounds from around my own living room to make a percussion track: birds outside the window, a cup hitting the table, my dog monkeying around with my recording device. The piece begins with seemingly no beat, but as the three disparaging tracks coalesce (guitar, percussion, piano), it is revealed that there was a hidden, underlying beat there all along.