In thinking through what shape we wanted the project to take, we decided to each identify five recurring themes in Rainer’s and Forti’s work, for a total of ten themes; and we also each identified five personal memories related to dance. We then developed a chance-based process—inspired by a 2015 interview Forti did with Alessandra Nicifero for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, which involved a grid of associations from her life—to randomly pair the themes with our personal memories. It was around these pairings that we based our essays.
The theme/memory combination for this essay was:
- Theme: The role of listening to collaborators/co-performers in building connection
- Memory: My taiko teacher having us incorporate dance into performance
align time, tuned // in to calibrate beats / to make // an ensemble / dynamically // listen
The pairing seemed like a fortuitous one, as the practice of listening to and collaborating closely with others connects naturally to the experience of drumming in an ensemble. The two topics clearly offered a lot of potential synergies and convergences, and the chance to explore the roles of sound and voice, both critical components of Forti’s approach. But that doesn’t mean the essay came together easily.
From the outset, I knew I wanted to incorporate a poetic element as a way to lean into the musicality inherent in taiko, so I began by writing a series of interstitial poems that run down the center of the page. These serve as a visual echo of what was, in practice sessions, informally called the “center line” section of the taiko piece, “Requiem die Tambori,” depicted in the essay.
The initial versions essentially broke down a few basic taiko concepts—the ji (underlying rhythm), kiai (usually improvisatory vocalizations that accompany the drumming), and soloing, with the final poem describing Forti’s philosophy around movement. In their original form, the pieces did not clearly connect the more substantive portions of the essay, or create a cohesive frame for the topics. Ultimately—as they evolved significantly during the revision process—the poems have come to serve many functions in the piece. In part they are tutorials of a sort, offering descriptions of key elements of taiko as well as insights into my particular experience with the form. They also provide space, or breath, between the denser prose sections, enabling the reader to absorb that content. And each one introduces the theme discussed in the section that follows, eg., the role of vocalization in both taiko and Forti’s work, the nature of solo work and improvisation, and the dynamics of collaborating with a group.
Let’s begin to arrange / ourselves as one // formation in concert / what’s a requiem // if not for / communion / interjection // of voice, don’t forget breath, centering / where // players, our parts interweave
In the essay’s early stages, much of the rest of the text was written in somewhat standard prose, akin to a traditional essay. I would describe the writing as serviceable. But for an art form as powerful as taiko, for work as vital and propulsive as Forti’s with voice, the language and format of the essay were neither serving the piece nor living up to the dynamism of the subject matter.
How to resolve this issue? Eventually, I came to the realization that a structural overhaul was needed. In fact, the structure essentially became the cornerstone of the piece.
This essay was the first of the five I wrote for the collection, and my early drafts reflected my perception that these pieces really needed to look and act like essays—or what I understood an essay to be. However, after we each wrote a few essays, Sarah delivered one that was surprising in format and language, structured in a unique way that corresponded perfectly to the topic. I was blown away. Her boldness inspired me to push the envelope further than I’d imagined, spurring me to fuse my experimental approach to poetry with the essay form, which would potentially result in a richer, more complex experience for the reader.
So, after writing the remaining essays using inventive forms tailored to the content of each, I returned to this one, giving myself permission to shake up the format somewhat. I converted the prose content into semi-poetic blocks of text—resembling prose but tighter, more lyrical, designed to do and show more than tell. And, following an early reader’s suggestion, I dedicated a full page to each block of text; with this change, each one has more impact, more room to breathe. Further, each of these vignettes contributes to a running thread that unspools as the book goes on, doing one of the following: illustrate how various of Forti’s pieces work, particularly in terms of voice/sound; examine an aspect of my experience with taiko; or interrogate the history of taiko and the evolution of women’s roles within it. This intentional, one-per-page treatment creates a more dynamic structure in keeping with the kinesthetic nature of the topics at hand. With each new page, the narrative of the essay unfolds and shifts from one core thread to the next, painting a more complete picture of my story vis a vis the role of collaboration and listening in taiko and postmodern dance.
mnemonic, kuchi-shoga: we sing to verbalize // patterns to play ... each mouth its own // chatter / how we learn sticking, mark timbre // and time
But the reimagining of the structure went beyond revising the poems and converting the prose into manageable blocks. To make the form and content truly cohere, I devised a way to formally enact the practice and performance of the “Requiem” piece discussed in the essay. I transcribed a score of sorts—in a nod to the techniques of many postmodern artists—such that each prose block came to represent a single drum strike from the piece’s “center line” sequence; the heading for each section—Do, Ko, Ka, Ra, etc.—also indicates which hand is used for each strike, which part of the drum is struck, and the length of each hit (following the vocalization method, kuchi-shoga, typically used to learn taiko pieces). With this construction, each portrays a discrete observation, memory, or insight, akin to the moment in which a drum is struck.
a call for invention // adding impact / need a trick to so-re // at will / with as little throat
//
possible / our voices not only for words
Many of the vignettes offer a snapshot of Forti’s works, walking the reader through pieces that incorporate sound—especially voice—while highlighting the role of listening and interacting with participants. And they illustrate how she worked with techniques like improvisation—also an important element of taiko.
In alternating between stories of my taiko experience, discussion of art on a historical and anthropological level, and analysis of Forti’s work, I aim to show the parallels and intersections of these seemingly disparate topics. These various layers and contexts eventually converge in the final section, illuminating the overlaps between taiko and postmodern dance, between my experience and Forti’s, and between Western art theory and Eastern art forms, especially through the lens of the female artist—mind, body, and voice.
riffed, in mirroring // cohere / count out allotted beats to echo // each our own iteration an energy interchange ... in sync as any sequence // in unison.
