Image courtesy of John King

Choreographer Brandon Collwes and composer John King have been presenting a weekly live online performance series, “Sonic Gathering”, since April 1, 2020. Each 30-minute performance features a rotating cast of dancers and musicians presenting new collaborative work of movement and sound, each performer participating from their own home. Inspired by the concept of a Merce Cunningham “Event,” each week the music is brought together through a combination of pre-composed material, chance-determined time-organization and spontaneous creation. The dance follows a separate timing structure. Some of the material is choreographed by Collwes and some material is improvised by the dancers at predetermined intervals watching listening and responding to one another.

This special edition will link a small number of dancers and musicians together at the CultureHub studio in New York City with remote participants to mark one year of the Sonic Gathering.

Dancers: Brandon Collwes, Lindsey Jones, Jennifer Payán, Claire Westby
Musicians: John King, Leyya Tawil, Luke Stewart

Powered by LiveLab, a browser-based media router for collaborative performance.

Wednesday, April 7
6pm EST / 3pm PST
Free / Donate

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Brandon Collwes is a dancer/choreographer. He joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in January 2006 where he danced up until the close of the Company in 2011 in the finale Legacy World Tour. He is currently a dancer and rehearsal assistant of the Liz Gerring Dance Company, performs for Sally Slivers and Dancers, makes his own choreography and continues to teach and stage Cunningham pieces for the Merce Cunningham Trust. Since April 2020 he has danced and choreographed for “Sonic Gathering” with composer John King, a weekly live unedited performance event which has a rotating cast of dancers and musicians on zoom. He is also an abstract painter.

John King is a freelance composer/violist/guitarist/sound artist making work within remote performance platforms since March 2020. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, it has become for him a great source of inspiration and has led to many new approaches to live musical creativity, practice and collaboration. Each week new music 30min in duration is created and its time is organized using unique and independent methods, intersecting with the choreography in unknown chance-determined ways.