Sunday, August 15, 2010

Propeller Dance - "Shedding Light"

Ok, I wandered away from this blog again... Mostly because I tend to upload stuff to FaceBook first, but also because my new camera creates such large raw files that my old Mac Mini was struggling to keep up when processing them. Now I'm using a nice G5 iMac with four times the RAM and double the processing speed, so things are rockin', and continue to be about four years behind the cutting edge. ;)

Back in early June the Propeller Dance group held its annual year-end fundraiser on the 11th and 12th, and this time we did two nights at the Arts Court Theatre. It turned out to be a hot ticket event, as both shows sold out! Photos are below...

I've done a ton of work with the group so far this year, as I continued not only working with the Monday evening class but also with the main performing group. And there have been quite a few workshops as well, and for a change these have continued into the summer. Since Dominique St. Pierre has always been the perf. group's main musician we did not want to leave him out of the big show, so he was able to juggle his schedule and Propeller found the cash to pay for both of us! So we got to create the music together and it was great fun. A video of the show should be forthcoming.

More photos of this event are at David Scrimshaw's Flickr page.

Our shows were on the Friday and Saturday nights, and Thursday was for dress rehearsal, so we musicians loaded in on the Wed. night while the stage set was being constructed...
Testing out lighting patterns...More or less complete...
Fellow musicians Mike Essoudry and Dominique St. Pierre get things organized...My rig. Yes, it resembles those keyboard stacks from the 70's, but it made life easier, since sounds often have to be changed quite quickly. Just had to thrown some plywood together for a stand and voila. At left, Roland Handsonic HS-10 (digital percussion pad). The lower keyboard is my venerable Kawai K4 synth (now about 20 years old!), while upper one is an M-Audio Key-Rig 49 triggering soundfonts on the petite iBook at right (which also played a few loops). On the Kawai sits my Aulos alto recorder...The silent auction during intermission. It brings in the dough!
Members of the main performing group gear up for the show...