There Might Be Others

Directed and choreographed by Rebecca Lazier, There Might Be Others is a collaborative dance and music performance inspired by composer Terry Riley’s seminal work In C featuring an international cast of dancers from the USA, Canada, Poland and Turkey. Musicians perform a score by Dan Trueman, created in collaboration with the acclaimed ensembles Sō Percussion and Mobius Percussion. Commissioned by New York Live Arts, the work won a New York Dance and Performance Award (BESSIE) for Outstanding Score. The piece originally premiered in New York in the spring of 2016 and was remounted in Halifax the following year in a co-production with Mocean Dance and the Scotia Festival of Music.

There Might Be Others examines the role of presence, performer agency, and collective decision-making to create emergent composition. It builds on traditions of open work in dance and music, in which performers compose in real time with predetermined content. Riley’s In C, with its interlocking modules of music, indeterminacy, and ability to house diverse musical genres, catalyzed Lazier and Trueman’s collaboration. Movement phrases range from rhythmic sequences to sustained gestures, distilled abstraction to camp theatricality, interactive games to isolated tasks, and the performers choose the order in performance. Ultimately, the piece stages negotiation and celebrates the beauty of a diverse community of performers negotiating aesthetic impulses across perpetually changing contexts.