Now Everybody Sing: The voicing of dissensus in new choral performance

Myers, Misha (2011) Now Everybody Sing: The voicing of dissensus in new choral performance. Performance Research, 16 (3). pp. 62-66. ISSN 1352-8165

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Abstract / Summary

This peer-reviewed article in The Performance Research Journal, “On Participation and Synchronicity” defines an emergent form of contemporary choral performance that has not been considered elsewhere. It investigates examples of choral works (Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleine’s Complaints Choir, Phil Menton’s Feral Choir, Bill Drummond’s The 17), that push the boundaries of choral performance to offer new modes of collective and co-authored music making as contemporary live art and performance. These works offer opportunities for contemporary formations of community via self-replicating structures of collaboration, self-organisation, social interaction and dissensus. This research follows on from and contributes to my on-going exploration of participatory structures and modes of co-authorship and meaning-making in performance. It expands upon the exploration of aleatory, interactive or propositional structures enacted in my previous project way from home and Take me to a place, a song map of Plymouth created and performed with international inhabitants of the city in 2004 (www.soundcloud.com/homingplace). Following on from the publication, I curated two related symposiums, festivals of performances and series of workshops at the Performance Centre at Falmouth University in 2012 and 2013 with contributions and headline performances from Gaggle, Phil Minton and Bill Drummond.

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