The Basin Art Mine, a former mining facility that was recently converted to a community arts space, welcomed jazz musician Caroline Davis and dance artist Michelle Boulé for an “immersive night of improvisation, saxophone, electronics, and dance”, to an audience of more than 50 area residents and visiting patrons.
Davis has toured extensively with prominent jazz groups and produced eight studio albums. Boulé has danced, taught, and choreographed in over 25 countries and had her work featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and on “The Today Show.”
“Since I left New York, I’ve focused a lot on my healing and coaching work, so that kind of took over a bit, the past few years,” said Boulé, who now lives in Missoula and operates her own wellness clinic. “But I really try to think of my life as my creative practice. So, no, I haven’t been practicing all the time, but I can’t deny that dance is a part of who I am.”
The performance involved Davis digitally looping her saxophone playing to create layered and discordant rhythms, effectively turning herself into a one-woman orchestra as Boulé performed an improvised, semi-interpretive dance.
“During the performance, we lead together,” said Davis. “But we don’t practice together, or much at all. I practice with the tools so that I can access any sound I like in a given moment, but not much more.”
Occasionally introducing an acoustic sax, Davis deployed powerful, industrial drill beats to create a disorienting environment for Boulé’s dance performance. Her music, and Boulé’s dance, together evoked a sort of anti-montage; one that asked audience members to consider their collaboration as a continuous, low-velocity deconstruction of the other, and their art as an emergent phenomenon as opposed to a synthesized, coherent presentation.
“It’s with me all day, when I know I’m coming here to perform,” said Boulé. “I think about what feels important in my life. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about stillness, and finding stillness. But I don’t always like to put language to it, because language will kill it. I can’t box in what I’m trying to do with too much language, so it’s about finding balance and what line of tension I want to hold that will propel me forward.”
Later in the performance, Boulé invited a colored, gossamer sheet into her dance that she wore to obfuscate her form and to present her movement in a new, kinetic way. She also used a series of floor lights to project dual shadow images of herself against the walls of the Art Mine, which further abstracted her dance.
Boulé and Davis will next perform at the Westside Theater in Missoula, at 7:30 p.m. on April 5. They will be joined by award-winning jazz trombonist Naomi “Moon” Segal, who is expected to perform at the Basin Art Mine in early June.
