What do I desire, adding audio and visuals

 I was inspired to make a sound recording for the "What do I desire" poem I wrote about Salome and Draupadi.  I could imagine this perhaps as a duet, two of us connected by a sheer sari that wraps and unwraps and intertwines us.  Note that I was fooling around with a shruti box generator and couldn't record it too well, it doesn't sound like it sounded coming directly from the generator, and the transitions are a bit rougher, but I like the idea of it!

password: desire



And here I've overlaid one of the video projection improvisations that I was playing with and find that it could be related to the poem, though for a group piece, I like the duet idea better.

password: wonderful


Questions:
1.  Are you more interested in the projection with live body here or in the reviews study "Maud and Me"?
2.  Other ideas for enhancing the audio of this poem?
3. Is this piece related to the Maud Allan work we've been doing or is it too much of a tangent?
4. Any other thoughts?

"Chasing ghosts," Reviews Exploration

Maud and Me

I made an audio mash up of her reviews (text is below) and improvised with my live body and her still projection, as well as my live body with her moving projection.  This is edited together the most interesting parts.  Note that sometimes I was improvising without the sound so the rhythm doesn't always match up. 

  
password: wonderful


Wonderful Flesh Experiments from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


This is the moving projection I created to the sound score.  It was too busy to insert the live body with in all places but there was one spot in particular that I liked.  I put it here in case it's useful some other way.  

password:  wonderful



 Here's the text for the audio, a mash-up of the reviews:

sins of her wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh

such delicious embodiment might win forgiveness with sins of her wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh

swayed by passion, her mouth parched for kisses with sins of her wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh

Eastern femininity, writhing body, voluptuous and wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh. 

slender and lissome, exquisite ecstasy, perspiring and wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh

One moment she is vampire…next she is lynx, swayed by such wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh. 

wildly jerking, swaying with passion, blossom into wonderful flesh

sins of her wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh. 

Her laughs and her sighs, she shrinks and she vaults, with sins of her wonderful flesh. 

sins of her wonderful flesh  

Questions:
1.  What parts do you find most compelling of the projection with live body?
2.  How do you read or interpret the live body, projection and audio coming together?
3. What other ideas come to mind?

Sounding the Spectator

For my study, I did a sound recording of the text of one of the reviews of Maud Allan's performance of The Vision of Salome from The Labour Leader.   

Here is one take of just my voice:

Here is another take, where my voice is accompanied by the music from another Oriental dancer's work, Ruth St. Denis' "Delirium of Senses," the culmination of her choreography, Radha. 


It would have been interesting to use the actual music from A Vision of Salome, but I haven't been able to nail down what that was yet.  Some say that she danced to original music by Belgian composer Marcel Remy; others claim that it was an arrangement by Remy of Strauss' "Dance of the Seven Veils."   See, for instance, Clair Rowden's "Whose/Who's Salome?: Natalia Trouhanowa, A Dancing Diva" (Ashgate Publishing, 2013, 75).

Here are a couple links for prop/costume ideas:
pearls: https://www.amazon.com/Zivyes-Fashion-Pearls-Necklace-Accessories/dp/B06ZYZFXZS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1548740578&sr=8-2&keywords=pearls+costume+jewelry
severed head: https://www.amazon.com/Forum-Novelties-Severed-Halloween-Haunted/dp/B01LOUWV74/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1548740803&sr=8-8&keywords=severed+head

QUESTIONS:
(1) What is your emotional or visceral response to my reading?  Is it too over the top?  What kind of person do you imagine me to be (personality, gender, class, etc.)?
(2) How might you imagine this material staged / embodied / performed?  How would the audience be involved in that?
(3) Which version do you prefer, and why?
(4) Other thoughts?