Rebeca Dawn Peterson and Professor Murray Boren, Composer-In-Residence

Part of being an artist is being misunderstood. Being an artist myself, I have found that it doesn’t matter what form your art manifests itself, there is commonality among all artists if you choose to recognize it. Collaboration in the arts is something that can have positive and/or negative effects, but is something that should be encouraged, especially among students.

There are many factors that must be considered when artists combine their talents. I have spent several years studying composing music. Dancers spend several years studying dance and movement. Music performers spend several years perfecting the sound and technique of their instruments. Dancers need music to dance to and musicians need music to play and I need music to write. We are all related, yet there is very little collaboration among students that crosses established lines because it requires compromise and moving out of comfort zones. In the piece Toying With Emotions, my aim was to cross established lines and push comfort zones for the dancers and musicians involved.

The project began with a concept of representing emotions, or qualities associated with emotions (i.e. happy, melancholy, love, anger, and peace) through music and movement. There are sounds and movements in our society that are commonly used to represent such emotions, but I feel these standards can be stretched and widened to include new perceptions. Once the idea of Toying With Emotions had been conceived, a choreographer was found who shared passion and enthusiasm for the project. Then the music began to come alive along with the movements. Sometimes the movements inspired the music, and sometimes the music inspired the movements; it was a collaborative effort, which involved good communication and respect for the other person’s art form.

Once the music was written and codified, a good recording was needed for rehearsals with the dancers and the performance. Twenty-four musicians were needed for the music that had been written. The ensemble was made up of music majors from BYU and met to rehearse several times before the recording to perfect the difficult areas. This was a great task in itself for several reasons; musicians have crazy schedules, new techniques and notation methods were used in the music that some musicians were unfamiliar with, and it was a lot of music to learn (approximately 14 minutes total running). Most of the rehearsals were held in the later hours of the day which made for a very long day for some people. The end result was well worth it (a copy of the music as well a VHS recording of the performance is available upon request).

As collaboration in the arts among students becomes more popular, students will grow and develop in ways that cannot be taught in a classroom, only learned through the experience. It is something that will benefit those involved, even if the collaboration is not successful, as in my experience. The bad experiences benefit just as much as the good as long as you learn something from them and share your experiences with others who may travel on a similar road.