PANFLUTES 
+
PAPERWORK
​BELOW ARE MATERIALS FROM THE PROCESS BEHIND PANFLUTES AND PAPERWORK, A WORK BY NORWEGIAN DUO INGRID BERGER MYHRE (CHOREOGRAPHER) AND LASSE PASSAGE (COMPOSER). TOGETHER THEY EXPLORED THE QUESTIONS: WHAT DOES 'DANCING TO MUSIC' REALLY MEAN? AND HOW DO YOU CREATE MUSIC FOR DANCE? IN THEIR DUET, INGRID AND LASSE EXAMINE THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DANCE AND MUSIC, USING SCORES AS TOOLS TO UPHOLD STRUCTURE OVER SKILL, METHOD OVER INDULGENCE. THE TITLE OF THEIR DUET ALLUDES TO THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE WET AND THE DRY: PANFLUTES, ON THE ONE HAND, ARE PLAYFUL AND PASSIONATE; PAPERWORK, ON THE OTHER, REFERS TO NOTATION AND SOUNDS BUREAUCRATIC. THE TENSIONS BETWEEN THESE STATES PLAY WITH CONVENTIONS IN THE CHOREOGRAPHER-COMPOSER RELATIONSHIP. WITH BOTH TOOLS AT HAND, INGRID AND LASSE INVENT GAMES THAT RE-NEGOTIATE THIS RELATIONSHIP. 
Lasse: Can’t remember what we where doing here, or what score we where processing. I think I was improvising some song, and Ingrid trying to impersonate it. Seems like she got it right!
​It’s a bit hard to see what Ingrid is doing in the back there, but it’s meant to be an interpretation of the game “red light / green light” – whilst Lasse (with the “ba-ba-ba”) had some crazy numbers series (not the Fibonacci sequence, but something more random and silly) that he was trying to follow. An early exploration of juxtaposition vs. accompaniment, one could say. Neither of us tried to make sense.
Throughout the process we made various attempts at finding efficient ways of notating our complex structures and scores – that we could both read and understand. Here is one of the more unsuccessful of these attempts.
​Learning how to dance from each other. Here, Lasse is leading and Ingrid is following to the best of her ability.
”Composition as Explanation” by Gertrude Stein gave us confidence. ​
​Folding paper planes, back when we thought that might come in handy. You never know.  
Sticks from Prose Collection, Christian Wolff (Frog Peak Music, cop. 1969-1985)
​Lasse: Another serious number sequence that we’re trying to perform in the most unserious way possible. Ingrid: All I remember from this was that it was Lasse’s idea.
The Fish’n’Chips poem, before we realised less is more and went minimalistic.
​This picture is taken with Ingrid's crappy phone after one of our first ever brainstorms, before the project was formalised in any way. At this point, all we knew was that we wanted to work together. We had no idea what was in store for us. 
​Ah, concentration! Early version of what we internally call the ‘ping pong scene’. We were at a beautiful cabin by the seaside, and outdoor rehearsals seemed like the only right thing to do. Spring time and birds singing. The computer does the playback, which we eventually ended up playing live using the claves.  
Identifying with the note stand. Choreography imitating musical objects.
​Lasse, the composer. (If you look closely you will see lime and salt in a bowl there. Meaning there's got to be a Corona not far away. The beer that is. We usually don’t drink whilst working, so this must have been a session after working hours.)
​Band rehearsal (on a bad day). Ingrid actually used to play the drums when she was younger, and for a while, we had an ambition that the finished piece would catapult her back into the music scene. It didn’t, but the rehearsals did pay off  - however, in other ways than what this clip might suggest. 
​”When the structure is in place, everything else can be pure feeling.” Arnold Schoenberg.
Late night rehearsal silly joke.
This might not look like it means anything in particular, but it does – and it is more specific than it seems. The "old loop" is judiciously stolen from what Ingrid learned at a workshop with Matteo Fargion.
Ingrid: Fooling around in the studio.
The actual score of the opening scene of the piece, as it turned out. ​
Applying musical structures to pedestrian actions. 
One of our criteria for this residency was to rehearse in the sun, which on this day meant seated on this bench. As we couldn’t move much, we started playing around with rhythms and patterns of words. This led to some sound poetry – and a lot of paperwork.
So many hours, so many variations, so many word documents. And who would have known, we actually ended up with something surprisingly similar to the very first version.
Panflutes and Paperwork is on tour in 2020 as part of Aerowaves. More on Ingrid here and on Lasse here.