MDPE.11:1 - The Recurring Difficulty

Prepared and responsive performance coexist across Music and Dance. A classical musician realizes notated material differently on each occasion. A social dancer draws on learned coordinations while responding to music, partner, floor, and surrounding dancers. Jazz, improvised Dance, and live coding can generate material while the performance is already under way.

Project language often collapses several objects:

• a score, choreography, prompt, code listing, cue, or rule describes material, a Method, constraints, or some combination;
• musical or movement material is what a performer uses or generates; its bearer is not necessarily the material;
• world-side contact, timing, safety, instrument, latency, or participation constraints obtain or fail during Work; a rule card only states proposed constraints;
• the performer performs dated Work, and that Work enacts a domain Method;
• the interpretation or generated material is a result within that Work;
• a recording, code state, changed score, sensor trace, or note preserves selected traces;
• the bounded performance occurrence and its presentation to listeners, viewers, partners, or participants remain a separate result.

When these collapse, rehearsal success becomes a performance occurrence, an improvised change is backdated into the score, a recording becomes “the performance”, or the performer’s contribution disappears. The opposite error is recording every micro-action, disrupting the Work and producing a trace no later decision can use.