Sonata for three bodies, developed in partnership with dancer Nadia Benes, is a co-improvisational duet which features an aesthetic conversation between dancer and instrumentalist. We are fascinated by live translation across mediums, interpretations of sound from movement and vice versa, and most of all in the cross-pollination which joins the two—how the physical act of playing an instrument entails a particular choreography, and how the movement of dance produces its own music of breath and shifting weight. The sonic and the kinetic generate each other (they are each other).

We are also interested in exploring the essence of communication in its raw, extralinguistic forms—in call-and-response, mimicry, disagreement, deceit, apathy, and all of the ways that we orient ourselves in relation to others. While these conversations are largely open and spontaneous, they remain bound by the thematic logic and sectional structure of sonata form: Exposition, Development, and Recapitulation.

This work is the culmination of a months-long collaboration during which we have developed a shared gestural language through a variety of previous improvisational directives and rules. One of these works included a meditation on aesthetic and metaphysical conceptions of materials such as cellophane, air, mud, bones, ice, and honey. Another included a turn-based game of response wherein each player has the power to explicitly end a stream of conversation. These improvisational directives, like scaffolding, have left behind a rich gestural language in their wake; and this work, our longest one yet, is a celebration of this collaboration.

We offer our deepest thanks and gratitude to the magnanimous Gaston Gosselin and to the Beacon Ensemble for giving us the opportunity to share our music and movement with you at the inaugural night of 2025 Beacon New Music Festival! We are humbled to be featured among such inspired and dedicated young artists. Our sincerest thanks, as well, to our audience in Cambridge for coming to the show and for supporting contemporary art forms at a time when funding for these ventures has been so greatly diminished. We hope to perform for you again soon.