Amplified Traces

“How do we sing and move to comfort ourselves in times of uncertainty? How do we find solace in our own intimate spaces? What secrets are we trying to conceal when our public lives encroach on the private? Why do we seek to reach beyond borders and across the tyranny of distance, even if it sometimes costs lives, evokes violence, and further separations”

-Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh

Omaha Under the Radar and KANEKO present a GENERATOR SERIES virtual event featuring poet Britny Cordera, vocal quartet Quince Ensemble, dancer/choreographer Veronica Santiago Moniello, and composer Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh. Cordera will perform her poems revelations and Sagittarius season, which were recently published in Luna Luna Magazine. Quince Ensemble will present a digitally realized premiere of Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh’s Amplified Traces with dancer/choreographer Veronica Santiago Moniello.

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A note from composer Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh:

“How do we define interpersonal connections in the time of social distancing? 

When the piece was first conceived, it was going to be performed as a multimedia installation performance housed in the beautiful gallery space at KANEKO, Omaha. It was going to be built around a multichannel speaker setup and projector screens, encapsulating the audience member in an immersive environment shared with the performers. It was going to be a piece that confronts the boundaries of our bodies, celebrating its desires and sensitivity, examining its limitations and protectiveness. It was going to challenge our perspective on the corporeal-spatial understanding of music performance, it was going to be about inhibiting a live acoustic feedback environment, and it was going to be about choreographing sound’s movement in space as activated by moving performers. 

It was about coalescing multiple threads of observations into one amalgamation. And then it wasn’t.

When the world suddenly hit pause, live performances became a memory as distant as a sweet dream that evaporates. No longer planned as a piece to be performed in space with a live audience, the piece began to pivot towards addressing the topical concerns of confinement, limitation, and solitude. It was heading towards experimentations on collaborating over internet latency, grids of little video boxes in gallery view, compressed audio and video quality, 2-dimensional human interactions, and the unsettledness of a never-ending sheltering in place. 

Looking back to the journey of the work, the best way to describe Amplified Traces is that it never ceased to be about the people involved in the project and the implication of the human condition. It is about how, despite all the restrictions and distances between myself, members of Quince, and Veronica, what connects us is a collective wish to complete the creative journey we set out all those months ago, in our rigorous discussions about the boundaries of the female body, and the borders that confine it. It is about trust, being honest in confronting our limitations and vulnerabilities, and asking: 

How do we sing and move to comfort ourselves in times of uncertainty? How do we find solace in our own intimate spaces? What secrets are we trying to conceal when our public lives encroach on the private? Why do we seek to reach beyond borders and across the tyranny of distance, even if it sometimes costs lives, evokes violence, and further separations?”

 

Performers:

Britny Cordera is a two-year Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. She is a proud WOC and Louisiana Creole poet, descending from African, Indigenous, and French/Spanish ancestors. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in the Pinyon Review, Concis, Xavier Review, and Auburn Avenue. Currently, she is an MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and an intern for poemoftheweek.com. Learn More

Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh is a Taiwanese-Australian composer currently based in the United States. Her compositional interest focuses on immersive physical experiences and she often articulates sonic expressions in terms of choreography, phenomenology, and musical-social interactivity. Hsieh’s latest works delve into examinations of bodily presence, borders, and proximities through the lens of power dynamic, control, and gender politics. Her collaboration with flutist Kathryn Williams, Pixercise, for instance, is a work that addresses the cross-sections between the female body, physical exercises, and the virtuosity in contemporary music performance. Learn More

Singing with the precision and flexibility of modern chamber musicians, Quince Ensemble is changing the paradigm of contemporary vocal music.  Described as “the Anonymous 4 of new music” by Opera News, Quince continually pushes the boundaries of vocal ensemble literature. As dedicated advocates of new music, Quince regularly commissions new works, providing wider exposure for the music of living composers. Comprised of vocalists Liz Pearse (soprano), Kayleigh Butcher (mezzo soprano), Amanda DeBoer Bartlett (soprano), and Carrie Henneman Shaw (soprano), Quince thrives on unique musical challenges and genre-bending contemporary repertoire. Learn More

Veronica Santiago Moniello began her studies at the “Piso rojo” School of Contemporary Dance and in “Iudanza” University of Contemporary Dance in Venezuela. In parallel, she worked as an interpreter with the following companies: Caracas Roja Laboratorio, Compañía Nacional de Teatro de Venezuela, Danza Hoy, Río Teatro Caribe and La Máquina Teatro. She has studied and worked internationally in Germany, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Belize, España and Venezuela, and elsewhere, and has collaborated with Pina Bauch, Felix Burkle, Samir Akika, Unusual Symptoms, Chikako Kaido, Leandro Kees, Rodolfo Leoni, Mark Sieczkarek, Francisco Leiva, and others. She is currently involved as a co-creator in several projects in collaboration with Alex Carrillo, Javier Fresneda (Enduring), Tomas Gomez (Peces) and Fernando Melo (La distancia mas larga entre dos puntos), (Rua do Lavradio). Learn More

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About the Generator Series: Presented by KANEKO and Omaha Under the Radar, the Generator Series will present events that investigate music’s relationship to our physical world, seeking the connections between sound and architecture, sound and natural landscapes, sound, and the human body, and more. Focusing on music by living composers, including sound improvisation and experimental composition, the Generator Series will be an outlet for non-commercial music that asks questions about how we listen and how we interact with sound in the 21st century. 

About Omaha Under the Radar: Omaha Under the Radar is an annual experimental performance festival in the Midwest. We celebrate cultural innovators with performances throughout the city of Omaha. The festival emerged from a desire to support innovative performers and creators living and working in the Midwest, and to connect this community to other performance communities throughout the United States. 

Since the first festival, held in 2014, Omaha Under the Radar has presented over 200 artists from more than one dozen cities throughout the United States. We work to present a multiplicity of genres, ideas, and identities through performances, talks, group discussions, and educational opportunities. Omaha Under the Radar is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization. To make a tax-deductible donation in support of our programming efforts, visit our SUPPORT page.