Settling the score: music and the performer-creator approach in Nicola Elliott’s Run!

Abstract

The ‘performer-creator’ approach to the creation of dance and movement theatre presumes that messages, content and meaning become inscribed in movement through processes of experimentation, improvisation, discussion and play: the performers, guided and facilitated by a choreographer, participate in the creation of the dance language and steps that eventually develop into the final work. For her 2013 production entitled Run!, South African choreographer Nicola Elliott expanded this approach to include also the creation of the musical score. As the musical performer in this work, I was engaged in similar processes and activities to those the dancers were involved in; I acted as intermediary between the choreographer, dancers and the composer, and the musical score for this production was created synchronously with the movement language. This article discusses the process through which the musical score for Run! was created; it explores Elliott’s ‘performer-creator’ approach and some of its implications in terms of musical creation; and it examines some of the implications of creating a musical score through creative choreographical processes that include improvisation, experimentation and play. I suggest that reading Run! as a multimodal text enables the recognition of the different authors of this text: choreographer, dancers, musician and composer. Reading the work also as a prime example of the performer-creator paradigm further enables the recognition of the integral roles played by the performers in the creation of this production.