Scales of Air (2013)
A multidisciplinary video project that explores dancing and playing an instrument as overlapping practices
and examines the relationship between musical and anatomical structures.
Cinematography: Hanna Gonder
Choreography, Direction and Editing: Shiri Sabah Teicher and Hanna Gonder
Dancer: Ofer Arazi
Bassoon: Shiri Sabah Teicher
As part of the creative process, I transformed a section from a Vivaldi bassoon concerto into bodily movement. I explored how the hierarchy of the musical scale could be embodied through different parts of the body, creating a kind of mapping of two octaves of the scale onto the body and into bodily positions. For example, the tonic of the scale-the strongest tone, the first degree-was associated with the feet and the head, while the dominant tones-the leading tones, such as the fifth and seventh degrees were mapped onto the knees and the neck.
From this mapping, a movement sequence emerged, whose progression through space embodied the musical line of the piece. I sought to rely not only on processes of thought and translation, but equally on sensation and on my own experience as a performing dancer who is also a performing musician.
The video moves between moments of sound and moments of silence, in which only the movement “plays.” I was curious about the experience of sound that movement might generate for the viewer.