Music The Dancer's Inspiration
Imagine a movie without a soundtrack - vapid; uninspired. Imagine a dancer without music. In each case, the music helps set tone and pace, enhancing imagery. So it is that composer Paolo Santos starts with sumptuous visual images and then creates the notes to match.
He said, "I started off as a painter. I then got really bored of static images and wanted to have movement in my art, so I got into video art installations and film. The natural move after that was to provide music to my moving images so I decided to also be a composer."
"My style is a hybridization of contemporary classical and modern dance music, mainstream music and atmospheric soundscapes. I like to incorporate everyday sounds like traffic noises to the composition. Of course you will not just hear the traffic noises layered on top of the music. I will process this sound to the point that it will not be recognizable but add to the overall feeling that I am trying to achieve."
But in a creative collaboration, Paolo's own vision must incorporate that of the choreographer. "For Bruce Steivel, the Artistic Director of Nevada Ballet, he illustrated the theme, sub-themes and characters in his dance concept. I then created imagery out of his description and used that to inspire myself to make decisions as to what instruments and sound textures to use. Knowing that he is very classical in his choreographies, I then arranged the progression of the music in accordance to his style. I submitted the composition to him and off he went to create his choreography."
"For their guest artist, Sonia Dawkins, she is a choreographer who creates movement out of the concept and theme first. I have composed music for choreographers in Prague, Spain, Scotland and Montreal like this before and this is tough, really tough. Once I felt that I had a solid comprehension of where Sonia was coming from, I then began creating pieces of music for her. She then 'auditioned' each music, so to speak. The ones she liked, we kept."
"I feel that music is the main driving force behind the creation of all dance movements. Music is what sets the pace of the choreography, creates the moods, helps tell the story, brings peaks and valleys in the choreography and gives the whole piece depth...It would be easy to pick up an existing piece of music, but where is the challenge in that? A choreographer can tweak the auditory part of the creative piece to his or her full satisfaction. If the choreographer wants the music to be this long or that long, I can easily do it."
"After I feel that I have enough 'food' from the choreographer, I then live inside my head for the rest of the process. Since I am a visual artist first, I compose music through imagery. In my head, I picture each instrument as an image, like a color, a floating block with different colored sides, a twisting ribbon, etcetera. I then arranged them to make visual sense. For example, yellow, which might be the guitar instrument, compliments violet, the cello."
"I will record real instruments - guitar, piano, drums, percussions, flute, etcetera - and modify them in the computer. I also work with MIDI -virtual instruments and sound information - quite a bit...I cut up the sounds I just recorded live and rearrange them to give it an awkward flow. I will then time stretch the sound, like a piano sequence playing at 100 beats per second, and beat map it to a bass groove playing at 120 bps."
"I have had discussions about my technique as being more technical than creative, even to the extent that it is not real music or art form. Funny, I used to think that about graphic designers when I was a painter in college. To me, the instruments or tools are progressive and different from classic style art, but the process of creation is very much the same. You cannot simply put sounds on your computer and burn it on a CD and call yourself a composer. You need creative problem solving, imagination, concept, performing skills and artistic vision."
All of which Paolo possesses. His compositions for Nevada Ballet Theatre's production, "Neon Evolution," evoke very different images in accordance with each choreographer's vision and complement the pieces beautifully. Paolo said, "I really appreciate working with dancers. I get to have a better understanding of their art and they also give me a fresh perspective in music creation...They give another dimension to the music by accompanying it with beautiful and powerful movements and stories." Ah, yes but first they're inspired by the music.