Duo Dance to an Improvised Tune

The audiences’ eyes grew wide at the sight before them—two barefooted women, one bent over, blowing into her soprano sax pointed down to the ground, the other with her leg brought up to her chest. Ever so slowly, the leg lowered and rested on the full length of the saxophonist’s back, in a feat expected only from a contortionist.

It may have been snowing outside, but inside the Winthrop House Junior Common Room, a small gathering of the elderly and the youthful were alternatively startled, stunned and awed by the lecture-demonstration on jazz improvisation and movement by acclaimed soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom last Friday afternoon. Accompanied by modern dancer Peentz Dubble, and moderator Tom Everett, Director of Harvard Bands, Bloom presented “An Exploration of Improvisation,” which focused on combining physical movement and improvisation as a jazz musician in the first of Harvard’s Office for the Arts’ “Learning from Performers” series.

Jane Ira Bloom, a “mover and shaker”—literally—in the use of both electronics and movement in jazz, was awarded soprano sax of the year by the Jazz Journalists Award in 2001, the Charlie Parker Fellowship for Jazz Innovation, and the International Women in Jazz Jazz Masters Award. But her proudest accomplishment is that she is the first musician to be commissioned by NASA’s art program-—and she even has an asteroid named after her.

After a short introduction by Everett, Bloom and Dubble began to zigzag without a word across the floor in a seemingly pre-staged manner. The silence was broken as Bloom began to play on her soprano sax. Dubble mirrored the music with her body, looking as if she was being blown away when empty air blew through the barrel of the saxophone, and writhing during moments when the tempo quickened, as if she were the embodinment of the sound itself. It was only after a synchronized “Welcome” that the audience was informed that both the music and choreography of this “walking dance” were improvised.

Bloom’s demonstration highlighted her deep interest in improvisation and movement. Not only is she fascinated by the changes in sound that she can produce by sweeping her instrument to create a Doppler-type effect, but she is also interested in physical movement in general. Over the last 25 years, Bloom has collaborated with improvisational dancers, specifically Dubble, in “a unique blend of movement awareness and sound awareness.”

“We are neither doing dance in its true virtuosic sense, nor are we doing music in its true virtuosic sense, but a hybrid in its true virtuosity,” Bloom explains. “We practice the discipline of being spontaneous.”

In a representation of this embrace of the spontaneous, Bloom described how only five minutes before the demonstration was scheduled to begin, she discovered that if a sand bag was placed on the push pedals of an open piano, loud notes would reverberate throughout the room. Without hesitation, she incorporated this discovery into her presentation.

During their second short performance, Bloom played her saxophone into the open piano, intensifying the echoes, as Dubble performed next to her. Punctuated scattato notes were reflected by Dubble’s arms whirling in a windmill-like fashion. The organic feel of their collaboration was apparent at the end of this piece, when Dubble found that the music brought her to the ground in a fetal position.

The performance then opened to audience questions, the answers to which were given through motion and music as much as word. Bloom and Dubble emphasized that they had developed a private personal vocabulary that did not have to be articulated or premeditated. Dubble described it as “trying to listen with all of my cells, even with my skin.”

However, their musical and physical improvisation was not completely random. As an improvisational dancer, Dubble explained that there are conventions, like moving in unison or canon, that can unite spontaneous choreography. Bloom and Dubble set about parameters, like agreeing to explore the floor space and having the dancer follow the music.

Yet, even these rules are not static. Bloom mirrored Dubble’s movements by raising and lowering her leg in a piece where she was to remain stationary, prompting Dubble to exclaim, “Jane broke the rules! As any good improviser would do.”

Bloom and Dubble also performed a piece that was inspired, in part, by the art of Jackson Pollock. While Bloom had composed this piece, she explained that she still improvised at certain moments.

In response to an audience question as to whether Bloom ever had to follow Dubble, rather than the dancer reacting to the music, the two women demonstrated with an example where Dubble initiated the improvisation. Their bodies were in actual physical contact for most of the piece. Within the tangle of limbs, Dubble would reach out and touch the barrel of Bloom’s saxophone, blocking the sound from coming out.

To help the audience better understand the spontaneous choices that were made while co-improvising, they did another walking dance while voicing their thoughts. This thought bubble session ended with both women talking about their own decisions, providing a real-time description of the ordered chaos that is required in their art.

Bloom said that she received musical inspiration everywhere, but is most strongly inspired by the dance world. She mentioned that, early on, people had commented that they noticed her moving while she played. Laughing as she recounted this anecdote, she said that she was initially unconscious of her movement, but that she always had an affinity for dance and was a “closet dancer.”

About two jazz artists are invited each year by Harvard’s Learning from Performers series. Bloom, Harvard’s 2004-05 Kayden Visiting Artist, will be returning to Cambridge on Dec. 11, to perform with the Harvard Jazz Bands in a concert honoring Steve Lacy, the late tenor saxophonist.

Everett invited Bloom to Harvard because he wanted the members of the Jazz Bands to think more about movement. He explains that jazz had its origins in dance during the big band era, and that Bloom combines traditional features of jazz, like improvisation, with movement.

Everett started the Harvard Jazz Band program in 1971, a time when fusion jazz was favored over the traditional jazz of the 1930s. He was surprised that Harvard did not have an organized jazz band, and believed that jazz had a great social, economic, as well as music influence on American culture. He emphasized that improvisation is what unites all of jazz and that it is a “point of personality or vocabulary.”

“They’re creating a language,” says Monday Jazz Band alto saxophonist Marcus G. Miller ’08 after the demonstration, voicing this reoccurring metaphor for improvisation. “I hear music, in general as a language. I can listen to sounds of the world and hear it. Composition is defined as sounds arranged by people, but everywhere sounds are arranged by God.”