There Might Be Others (2014–2017)

Premiere: New York Live Arts, March 2017

Concept and Direction: Rebecca Lazier

Music: Dan Trueman, in collaboration with Sō Percussion and Mobius Percussion

Choreography in collaboration with performers: New York: Simon Courchel, Natalie Green, raja feather kelly, Cori Kresge, Christopher Ralph, Anna Schön, Saúl Ulerio, Christopher Williams; Mocean Dance (Canada): Rhonda Baker, Sara Coffin; TORK Dance (Turkey): Tan Temel and Sernaz Demeral; Poland: Agnieszka Kryst, Jan Lorys, Ramona Nagabczynska, Pawel Sakowicz.

Musicians: Sō Percussion (Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting); Mobius Percussion (David Degge, Mika Godbole, Yumi Tamashiro, Frank Tyl), additional musicians based on community.

Costume Designer: Mary Jo Mecca

Lighting Designer: Davison Scandrett

There Might Be Others was developed over a two-year period during residencies in Turkey, Canada, and Poland with merged casts of New York dancers and local performers. Collaborators included: Stary Browar/Art Stations Foundation in Poznan with support from the Adam Mickiewicza Institute, Malta Festival Poznan and Gdansk Dance Festival; Mocean Dance and the Ross Creek Arts Centre supported by the Canada Council for the Arts; the American Embassy in Ankara, Turkey; and the So Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton University. Funding for the New York premiere by provided by Harkness Center for Dance, Adam Mickiewkcza Institute, The American Turkish Society, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Özyegin University, Polish Cultural Institute New York, Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, The Province of Nova Scotia's Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, and Mocean Dance.

Photos: Ian Douglas; Paula Lobo

There Might Be Others was commissioned by New York Live Arts and won a New York Dance and Performance Award (BESSIE) for Outstanding Score. Directed and choreographed by Rebecca Lazier, the work is a collaborative dance and music performance inspired by composer Terry Riley’s seminal work In C and features an international cast of 15 dancers and 12 percussionists performing a score by Dan Trueman created in collaboration with the acclaimed ensembles Sō Percussion and Mobius Percussion.

There Might Be Others examines the role of presence, performer agency, and collective decision-making to create emergent composition. It builds on traditions of open work in dance and music, in which performers compose in real time with predetermined content. Riley’s In C, with its interlocking modules of music, indeterminacy, and ability to house diverse musical genres, catalyzed Lazier and Trueman’s collaboration. With There Might Be Others, the artists have created music and movement phrases ranging from rhythmic sequences to sustained gestures, distilled abstraction to camp theatricality, interactive games to isolated tasks, and the performers will choose the order in performance. Ultimately, the piece stages negotiation and celebrates the beauty of a diverse community of performers negotiating aesthetic impulses across perpetually changing contexts.

This extraordinary collaboration also features costume design by Lazier’s longtime collaborator Mary Jo Mecca and lighting design by award-winning Davison Scandrett, who creates a reservoir of lighting environments he calls upon in performance, following the same score of the performers. Dramaturgy is by Naomi Leonard, a professor of aerospace engineering, who provided models for collective motion and evolutionary dynamics to provide additional real-time compositional tools.

A book, There Might Be Others, published by The Operating System Press, contains the dance and music score, performer instructions, guiding principles, and notes on the collaborations that led to the creation of the performance. It is a field guide to a process of collective composition and an archive of a project and presents the score as a set of possibilities to be taken in parts or absorbed as a whole.