{"id":148541,"date":"2010-11-15T19:41:49","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T19:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/in-her-latest-work-composer-juliet-palmer-explores-female-aggression\/"},"modified":"2010-11-15T19:41:49","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T19:41:49","slug":"in-her-latest-work-composer-juliet-palmer-explores-female-aggression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/in-her-latest-work-composer-juliet-palmer-explores-female-aggression\/","title":{"rendered":"In her latest work, composer Juliet Palmer explores female aggression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boxing, we\u2019re told, is the quintessentially male sport. Joyce Carol Oates, in her 1985 book On Boxing, <\/em>even says this: \u201cMen fighting men to determine\u2026masculinity\u2026excludes women as completely as the female experience of childbirth excludes men. The female boxer violates this stereotype and cannot be taken seriously\u2014she is parody, she is cartoon, she is monstrous\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toronto composer and sound artist Juliet Palmer<\/strong>, a founding member of the interdisciplinary performance collective urbanvessel<\/em>, disagrees. Palmer\u2019s Voice-Box<\/em>, with librettist Anna Chatterton and choreographer Julia Aplin, is about women who box, and it takes them very seriously indeed, using boxing as a metaphor for making a distinction between violence and aggression, and for understanding the positive value of aggression.<\/p>\n

\u201cAggression is a very gendered issue,\u201d says Palmer, who initially came to North America from her native New Zealand in 1990 to work with Meredith Monk in New York, earning a PhD in composition from Princeton in 1999. She now lives in Toronto. \u201cIf a woman is aggressive, she\u2019s often sidelined. But positive assertion is how we act in the world, how we get things accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n

The initial idea for Voice-Box<\/em>, commissioned by Toronto\u2019s Harbourfront Centre, came when opera singer\u2014and accomplished boxer\u2014Vilma Vitols approached Palmer about bringing the worlds of opera and boxing together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took us a while to find the form for Voice-box<\/em>,\u201d says Palmer, whose previous works with urbanvessel<\/em> include Slip<\/em>, a site-specific performance for bathhouse (performed at Toronto\u2019s Harrison Baths), and the much-acclaimed Stitch<\/em>, an a cappella work for three female singers whose central metaphor is a sewing sweatshop. \u201cOften there was the urge to push towards narrative, which wasn\u2019t helpful. We\u2019re exploring the structure of the sport \u2014 it\u2019s more of an event than a story.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a collaborative process, with the librettist there from the beginning. We spent time in the gym experimenting with training routines and vocal improvisation to see what impulses were triggered by the physical language of boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The piece, structured in a series of \u201cbouts,\u201d involves four protagonists (yes, there\u2019s some real boxing) and, as in much of Palmer\u2019s vocal writing, shifts fluidly between styles, exploiting the particular skills of its performers\u2014improviser, jazz and gospel singer Christine Duncan<\/strong>; actor and opera singer Neema Bickersteth; actor, comedian and boxing coach Savoy Howe; and Vitols, whose expertise ranges from Baroque opera to contemporary music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI write specifically for different performers, and I adapt what I\u2019ve written in collaboration with them,\u201d says Palmer, whose chamber and orchestral music is more abstract and complex than her theatre music. \u201cIf they have great improvisational skills, I make sure they have that option; if their strengths are in interpreting precise notation, then I do that. The challenge is in how those different voices can share the same space. Each has a different emotional register that I want to access.\u201d<\/p>\n

To expand her understanding of the voice in dramatic contexts in different cultures, Palmer has studied South Indian singing, Japanese folk singing and Georgian singing\u2014to name a few. In Voice-Box<\/em>, Duncan uses Tibetan throat singing to make the idea of aggression clear in the music. \u201cIt\u2019s in your face and uncomfortable,\u201d says Palmer, \u201ca deep, multiphonic sound that\u2019s non-feminine and aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a chorus of grunting sounds taken to extremes, an operatic duel, a tango, an electro-acoustic score that recycles sound endemic to the gym and the sport\u2014bells, punching bags, squeaking ropes\u2014and a cheesy, pre-recorded boxing theme.<\/p>\n

That theme goes public for the first time when Voice-Box<\/em> premieres on Harbourfront Centre\u2019s World Stage Series in Toronto, Nov. 10-14. We hear it\u2019s a knock-out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In-your-face music<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}