After a recent performance in San Francisco, I was musing on the choreographic use of unison. When does it really “work?” Why do I personally love unison? When, and why, does it not work?
I began a dialogue with a few choreographers around the country. Today I share ideas from Cynthia Oliver, Lauren Simpson, Amy Chavasse, and Jo Kreiter.
Leslie Cuyjet and Cynthia Oliver in BOOM! Photo: Yi Chun Wu
Unison, or the pretense of order – by Cynthia Oliver
There are places and times when unison ain’t no thang. When everyone learns the dance and performs it in a joint effort of communing, understanding, the groove, a gathering whereby moving is only one indicator of a journey taken alongside one another. But even in those moments unison is but a set of guidelines, it is not a rule. In fact, that gathering and moving together is often anything BUT unison. The improvisational aspect of each person’s own style and flourish upon the groups’ designed pattern is welcomed. It is the flava of a community that cherishes our differences. In language, the coincidental word spoken at the same time as another yields exclamations. “Jinx!” The jinx acknowledges that anomaly, the rarity of simultaneity – that in all the options in the universe the same thing actually happened at the same time. It must be a sign. I am most moved when unison erupts out of seeming chaos. Suddenly there is synchronicity, order as though it was something actually achievable. Unison quiets my mind. It at once offers me a rest from the search for meaning and leads me to question why two or more people would move with exactitude at the same time? I am intrigued by it, by its implications, its impossibility. When I watch theatrical dance choreography I look for its systems. I am fascinated by the worlds we create as choreographers, by the internal logics that movement designs articulate. When and where something happens, how often and by whom. The visible and invisible labors. There is no “natural” to this dance, even when we are performing “pedestrianisms.” So when unison appears in this setting, I think of the hours spent analyzing every minute aspect of a movement, voice, texture, tone, to be the same; to execute the movement, words, texture, of an offering in exactly the same way. And often when it is achieved, it is magic. I am utterly seduced. It is delicious. It is demanding. It is difficult. Both unwieldy and exacting. Perhaps impossible. So why does unison hold me hostage in such a way? To really get it one must be persistent, insufferable. Tireless. Maybe one day I will make an entire dance built of unison. If I can stand it. Could I stand it? Would I be judged unimaginative? Would it seem less “complex”? Would it betray a boring taste? My every womanness? I am after all an everywoman. I have been seeking out the brilliance of the everyday my entire career. Reimagining it, recasting it so that its beauty and (im)perfections are laid bare. Unison accomplishes the same in one fell swoop.
Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations "Still Life No. 7" | Excerpts from Jenny Stulberg on Vimeo.
Four Questions with Lauren Simpson
Inside a work, what strategies do you use to perform in unison?
We make and perform unison a lot. We never perform in unison to metered music because it flattens and “regularizes” the idiosyncratic rhythms we create inside the phrasing. To stay connected, we have many internal songs we sing to keep time, like “da da da’s” and audible breaths and sound cues we make with our bodies or on the ground. However our biggest strategy is practice. There is so much learning and growing and revealing that happens in each try; we more deeply understand the rhythm, our fellow dancers’ impulses, and increase our ability to listen to each other. Unison is a listening practice.
As a choreographer, why unison? What do you love about it? How does it amplify, magnify, heighten, enlarge?
I love unison because it is virtuosic and impossible at the same time. The detailed nature of the unison material, the speed at which we do it, and executing it in silence is a difficult human feat. Related to virtuosity and difficulty, unison is inherently a high risk performance situation. There’s something beautiful about the performers taking a leap of faith together, trusting each other to jump on a fast moving train at the same time and stay there for a long time. This elicits a special energy in live performance between the audience and the performers, a shared understanding of the risks taken in real time. The unison is deep listening made visible.
Unison is also impossible, and I love impossible tasks.
I love unison because it is the best way we have found to amplify very small actions.
The rehearsal process of watching dancers rigorously focus on detail is a beautiful exchange. We spend a very long time trying to find agreement, as best we can, for each moment. It is a way of continually trying to understand the experience of someone else down to the angle of their left talus bone. I want to see more of this in the world.
From the outside, how do you coach unison?
We take our time and go slowly.
Repetition. Repetition.
We video everything. The dancers can easily watch themselves and see where there is disagreement and discrepancies.
How do you approach unison – as a performer or choreographer – somatically?
Unison gets a bad rap in modern dance. It's “taught out" of us in college classes; we're told it is a symbolism for conformity, convention, and superficiality. I approach unison as an opportunity to connect and to trust.
Also, since unison is just plain hard, I approach it as a researchable problem. When you "solve it," or when you see good unison, you are also seeing evidence of rehearsal, confidence in movement choices, rigor, commitment, and craft. I would like to see more of that in contemporary dance performances (whether the work contains unison or not).
"Emi, Amy and Mimi, the Celebrated Love Partners, and Their Bicycle Emi Nomo" - created and performed by Amy Chavasse, Sarah Konner and Austin Selden. Photo: Sam Pavarenti
“When unison collapses…” – by Amy Chavasse
When unison collapses, the change or loss is more stark and visible. The audience gets to notice how what was, is now gone, and how it has become something else. Unison highlights the differences in interpretation. It underscores the differences in translation. I appreciate how one part of the body can operate in unison with other bodies, say the legs, and how the upper body or arms can be distinct from the others arm movements. Someone once said to me that he thought of unison as nothing more than “new age militarism.” I’ve thought about this a lot. I think it’s a fascinating but limiting way to think of bodies moving in agreement around a rhythmic or spatial idea. The idea of unison movement is a very culturally/racially encoded formulation. Lately, I’ve been working on a trio project with Sarah Konner and Austin Selden, and a duet with Malcolm Tulip that rely on unison stamping, talking, singing and traveling patterns. It is really hard.
Jo Kreiter's Flyaway Productions. Photo: Austin Forbord
“A tool to pull a site into a singular focus” – by Jo Kreiter
My work takes up a city block. Or sometimes two walls of an urban alley. Or sometimes an entire warehouse. So for me unison is a tool to pull a site into a singular focus. Once I establish a unison vocabulary, I love to break out if it, highlighting the odd ball who comes out of the unison base. I think this is a common choreographic strategy. But for me it is amplified, because I am filling vast, and at times distracting spaces, with motion that is not expected to be in there. Especially up there, as I choreograph an off the ground vocabulary.
I have ongoing conflict with myself about how much unison is needed from each body, in order to read as unison. I have ongoing dialogues with the dancers about how exact they need to be, in order to read well as a unison presence. I frustrate them because I change my mind a lot about this from one rehearsal to the next. I struggle to find the balance between the dancers’ individuality, and a desire for a cohesive look from moment to moment. It’s a conflict that I enjoy negotiating, within myself and as the director of an artistic team.
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Read other pieces about these artists here:
Artist Profile: Cynthia Oliver
Establishing Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations: My Biggest Challenge So Far – By Lauren Simpson
The Choreographic Moment: Ideas from Jo Kreiter
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Life as a Modern Dancer 
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