abstract: From fall 2010 to spring 2011, the author was the pianist in twenty public performances of Wilderness, a site-adaptable dance and audio installation by choreographer Yanira Castro and composer Stephan Moore. Wilderness's music was generated as the result of an algorithmic treatment of data collected from the movements of both dancers and audience members within the performance space. The immediacy of using movement to instantaneously generate sounds resulted in the need for a real-time notational environment inhabited by a sight-reading musician. Wilderness provided the author the opportunity to extensively explore an extreme sight-reading environment, as well as the experience of playing guided improvisations over existing materials while incorporating lateral thinking strategies, resulting from a real-time collaboration between composer and performer during the course of a live performance. This paper describes Wilderness in detail with particular attention focused on aspects of the work that most directly affect the pianist: the work's real-time notational system, live interaction between composer and performer, and the freedoms and limitations of guided improvisation. There is a significant amount of multi-media documentation of Wilderness available online, and the reader is directed toward this online content in the paper's appendix. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2012

Performance analysis is an objective method of gathering the data of performance, and generally transforms these observations into numerical data. Performance indicators, as well as a selection or elements of sucessful outcome, have often been used in order to feedback augmented information in performance analysis systems, but they have rarely been considered within the classification of performance analysis systems based on timing of analysis and feedback. The main aim of this study is to investigate performance indicators used within real-time and lapsed time systems so that the definitions of the performance indicators, the effectiveness of the performance indicators, their reliability and validity within real time analysis systems can be analyzed.

La thèse définit ce qui pourrait être une saisie du mouvement et interroge la possibilité d'écrire et de lire la danse. La belle danse, dont l'origine, la contextualisation, et la définition en tant que style sont présentés dans le premier chapitre est prise comme cas d'école. Le second chapitre est rédigé dans la perspective du scripteur et il présente une analyse de la notation Beauchamps-Feuillet. Le troisième chapitre, qui adopte le point de vue du lecteur, définit les règles implicites de la belle danse, déductible de l'analyse des sources, et propose une analyse de la "Türkish Dance" (c.1725), due au chorégraphe Antony L'Abbé et au notateur François le Roussau. La thèse se réfère aux recherches de Guillemette Bolens pour la compréhension de l'usage de l'empathie kinesthésique pour l'écriture et la lecture, comme à des recherches cognitivistes récentes (Alva Noë). Elle se réfère aux recherches d'Etienne Darbellay et à leur cadre théorique, par exemple la théorie de la métaphore (Jakoff & Johnson; Zbikowski pour son usage en musicologie) et la compréhension des processus mémoriels (Croisile). Elle prend en compte certaines études, cruciales pour la compréhension de la belle danse, de son écriture et de sa lecture (Francine Lancelot et Marina Nordera par exemple). / This thesis defines if dance could be grasps, and how. Belle danse is taken as a "cas d'école" for unswering this question. Belle danse's origin, contextualisation and definition are given in the first chapter. The second chapter embraces the scriptwriter perspective to analyse Beauchamps-Feuillet notation. The third chapter adopts the reader's perspective (if "reading" can mean "decode", " analyse", "interpret" and "perform".) This chapter explicits some of belle danse's rules that are implicitly explained in the sources. It analyses the "Türkish Dance" (c. 1725). This score —and this dance— has been choreographed by Antony L'Abbé, and notated by François le Roussau. This thesis is written in reference to Guillemette Bolens researches that takes in acount the use of kinesthesis for writing and reading actions. It points to Etienne Darbellay's research based both on "théorie de la métaphore" (Lakoff and Johnson) and memory's process understanding (Croisile), and to crucial researches on belle danse writing and reading, particularly those of Marina Nordera.