A participant puts the boots on, straps the cables round her waste and starts dancing. From the moment that her bodyweight causes pressure on the sensors inthe soles of the boots, she sends a MIDI note-on message with a velocity value. Each slap and stomp triggers a sound and the velocity value (how hard or soft it is struck) affects dynamic sonic and spatial parameters of that sound and/or the master sound.
There are four types of sound responses. One type is a sound that sustains for as long as you make contact with the sensor and stops when you break that contact, exactly like an electronic music keyboard, sensitive to the attack and sustain velocity. The second sound response is short and percussive – a sound that ends quickly regardless of how long you hold it. This sound response type is typical of the character of Gumboot dancing and produces the most pleasing effect for most dancers. The third type of sound response is the triggering of a musical loop (a snippet of music that will repeat itself) until the next hit on that specific sensor triggers the next sound and ends the current loop. The fourth type is a sound that triggers once only. This is similar to the percussive sample, but with a tail that completes itself and lingers longer than the physical hit. >>>>
These last two types of sound responses make the music layered and complex, and the dancer sometimes finds it difficult to keep track of the effect her movements are having. The connection between what she sees and what she hears becomes blurred, but musically this makes for enjoyable complexities. The intricate layers of sounds and effects make for rich sonic textures and rhythms that verge on chaos but still have very definite musical form. The timeline or feeling of linear compositional control disappears – there is only the moment. This is real improvisation in that different musical instances co-exist, surface and disappear. In a way, the music becomes the dominating persona while the dancer is the slave who drives the engine. If the dancer is willing to give up control and submerge herself in the musical event, the experience of speed, and of rhythmical crossings of all kinds of boundaries is absolutely exhilarating. By ‘giving up control’, I mean more specifically that the dancer continues to dance and move even through moments where the music doesn’t seem to respond as one might expect it to. The dancer must be willing to drive forward in the ‘dark’. Participants who tried the boots began to scream, to laugh, and to become hysterically excited almost immediately.
In a way the dancer is ‘swallowed’; seduced with an overwhelming surround sound which ranges from stunningly powerful to gentle, from beautiful to playful, from funky to sensual; sometimes a hint of a beautiful melody will suddenly make the dancer feel exquisite and powerful. And yet, the experience simultaneously confuses the dancer, taking away control and ‘splitting’ her comprehension and identity into a thousand chaotic vibrations. It brings the outside ‘in’. With every stomp/slap, a sonic space (contained by a set of boundaries) collapses and reincarnates into a new one.
Ephemeral Gumboots uses as its point of departure the tradition of Zulu Gumboot dance. Traditionally, this vibrant, energetic dance involves the creation of percussive rhythmic patterns in a series of stamps, claps and slaps on the lower leg. The dance involves coordinated steps, and follows the call and response chants of and traditional folksongs. Two remote worlds meet: interactive digital art and gumboot dance .
