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Constant Hum of the Chambered Nautilus
(2006) 40 minutes
investigates the artifice of sound production and of listening in our culture of multiple electronic devices and sound sources. The piece brings attention to the power and sensitivity of the human instrument itself.

In one section, composer Langdon C. Crawford and four dancers play with a mysterious shell-like object that emits bizarre sounds — gradually revealed to be a theremin* (contained on a rolling set piece by architect Illya Azaroff). A separate group of dancers commutes through the first listening to i-pods, oblivious, deep in their own soundscape.


Dancers: Tiffany Cunningham, Langdon C. Crawford, Laurel Dugan, Lindsay Forsythe, Chelsea Glassman, Fito Guevara, Philippa Kaye, Rachel Lehrer, Dawn Poirier

Choreography: Philippa Kaye

Electronic system and Music:
Langdon C. Crawford

Light design: Kryssy Wright

Costume design: Renee Kurz

Set design: Illya Azaroff

Premiered at Baryshnikov Arts Center, May 3rd, 2006

A dance in five sections, not necessarily separated by silence or stillness

Nautilus is; a shelled deep-sea creature often used-however idealistically- as an example of the Fibonacci set of numbers as expressed in nature because of its spiral form, the name of a submarine, and the name of various products-the most well-known being exercise equipment. Here, we are using it as the name of the section of the dance that uses the theremin. A *theremin is one of the earliest fully electronic instruments, and was designed to be played without being touched. The player moves his or her hands around two antennas to control pitch and volume. Here, Langdon C. Crawford uses the theremin as a controller to play the sounds he composed with a computer