Alwynne Pritchard

LRAM, ARAM, MA, PhD, Berlin, Germany

Don’t touch me, you don’t know where I’ve been

Don’t touch me, you don’t know where I’ve been is to be a 30 minute performance for vocalist/speaker/conductor, flute, ensemble (piano, clarinet, guitar and percussion), and live and pre-recorded electronics. Developed/ composed by Alwynne Pritchard in collaboration with flautist Bjørnar Habbestad, members of the ensemble asamisimasa, programmer Thorolf Thuestad and featuring the composer herself as vocalist and conductor, the piece draws on all the musicians’ extensive expertise as as improvisers. The electronics were developed by Thorolf Thuestad at BEK in Bergen and the work was premiered at the city’s Borealis festival on March 1st 2008.

Don’t touch me, you don’t know where I’ve been attempts to establish means of communication between several different performance elements, that I define as ‘characters’ within the drama.

The issues I intend this project to raise in the discussion are those relating to how the components of a performance are defined and the consequent impact this has on the possibilities for establishing new relationships between the performance and the ‘real’ worlds. In other words, how can we define new relationships between the spatial, temporal, ritual and philosophical elements of a performance and what impact does this have on the creative possibilities for all involved? What happens if we attempt to establish a line of communication between a piece of technical equipment (e.g. a stage lighting rig) and pianist, or between spoken text, the audience and stage lighting? Which questions have to be raised or paradigms established if these new relationships are to be experienced as pertinent to the performance and what impact might they have on how we experience art in our lives?