Constant Hum of the Chambered Nautilus

investigates the artifice of sound production and of listening in our culture of multiple electronic devices and sound sources, bringing attention to the sensitivity of our own instrument.  In one of the five sections, composer Langdon C. Crawford and four dancers play with a mysterious shell-like object that emits bizarre sounds — gradually revealed to be a theremin* (contained on a rolling set piece by architect Illya Azaroff). A separate group of dancers commutes through the first listening to i-pods, deep in their own soundscape.
Nautilus is; a shelled deep-sea creature often used-however idealistically- as an example of the Fibonacci set of numbers as expressed in nature because of its spiral form, the name of a submarine, and the name of various products-the most well-known being exercise equipment. Here, we are using it as the name of the section of the dance that uses the theremin.

A *theremin is one of the earliest fully electronic instruments, and was designed to be played without being touched. The player moves his or her hands around two antennas to control pitch and volume. In the last part of the dance, Langdon C. Crawford uses the theremin as a controller to play the sounds he composed with a computer.

A dance in five sections
Nine dancers, 50 minutes

Dancers
Tiffany Cunningham, Laurel Dugan, Lindsay Forsythe, Chelsea Glassman, Fito Guevara, Rachel Lehrer, Dawn Poirier with Philippa Kaye and Langdon Crawford

Music
original live performance by Langdon C. Crawford, with additional sound; Saint Saens, The Beach Boys, Luciano Pavarroti “O sole Mio”

Premiere
Baryshnikov Arts Center, May 2006

W-I-P presented by Dance New Amsterdam, Movement research at Judson Church series, and Spoke the Hub

Photo: Steven Schreiber

designed by Double Triple