Le Chasseur et Le Chassé

- a work in progress -

Music composition & performance by Ben Mowat
Choreography & dance performance by Malena Grilli

Le Chasseur et Le Chassé is a simple imagined story about a woman-bird who is experiencing the struggles of life. Her task is to feed her infant chicks, but will they be safe in their nest whilst she is out hunting? This is a specially choreographed/composed by Malena Grill and Ben Mowat, who worked together to create a unified piece that exists as dance and music combined. The project was sparked by a seriese of improvisations Malena and Ben worked on over the summer of 2017.

the music - recorded & live versions

Here is the recorded version of the music. The premise behind the sound world is manipulated birdsong recordings. The birdsong samples were twisted and transformed in a wide variety of experimental ways, making many new intruemtns and synthesisers out of them and playing them back at various speeds and octaves. Using this pallet of sound, Ben then creating a suit of three pieces (see below). He also composed Le Chasseur et le Chassé, in communication with Malena, with both the narrative and choreography in mind as well as the music being loop based with a view to a loop pedal based live performance.

the choreography - a work in progress

Below are some videos showing ideas, improvisations, and draft versions of the choreography at various stages of developement. These are not the finished piece but give an idea of the movement vocabulary Malena is working with.

The live version is slightly differnt and will be performed on loop pedal, mini keybaord and hand made midi controller (via laptop), violin and samples.

Below is an early example of the live version of the music. The looping system is currently eveloving towards a slicker and more well polished performance.

Above is  a recent rehearsal in Easton Community Centre. The live version of the music is also at rehearsal stage.
Below is the first draft version of the choreography from when we first developed the piece in 2018.

Below are some short examples of improvisations and dance vocabulary ides.

About the music and the bird song, composer Ben Mowat says:

Although this piece was conceived to work with Malena's choreography to tell the simple story of our piece Le Chasseur et Le Chassé, it is also intrinsically linked with an electronic suit of three movements (see Soundcloud playlist below), all of which I composed as part of my MA in Composition for Film & TV at Bristol University. These pieces are all liked by their common electro-acoustic sound world which I developed based on samples of bird songs and mixed with violin and piano lines, effects and chords. I played with these samples in many different ways. For example slowing them down and then transcribing the bird's melodies and having them them played on synthesiser or violin. Changing the octaves and layering the same sample at many octaves simultaneously, putting them through grantable synthesisers and samples to create a whole series of new virtual instruments and synthesisers. I layered raw samples and added effects, delays and reverbs and manipulated the audio in raw form in softwares such as Isotope's RX. The result is an interesting and unique sound world which Le Chasseur et Le Chassé shares. To hear the three movement suit click (below).

Here are some images of the music set-up as well as a walk-through demonstration video.

Working on the scenary:

The idea is to have two paitings, stuck to cardbaord, which we can fix to either side of the chair. The chair will be placed in the centre of the stage and act as the mother bird's "nest". On the front side, the audience will see all three chicks happy in the nest. The nest will then be covered by the performer when she goes out hunting and at one point, turned around. When she returns, she will open the nest, only to find that one chick has been taken by a predator!

Ideas for costume:

We are aiming to make a simple costume from materail, ung from the arms as wings and with the use of some feathers we have bought. At the moment, the idea is to take inspiration from real life birds, such as those we have found in our bird book (pictured). We are particualy inspired by the yellow, blue, grey and white of the Blue Tit but are still open to ideas at this stage.