14 Kano
Picture
Opening
Paul Zmolek

Originally solely a dance artist/educator in training and temperament, my approach has continually expanded in outlook beyond any neatly defined discipline genre to become truly transdisciplinary, taking whatever form within whatever media that is required of the work. I am most interested and find delight in collaborative efforts. My colleagues and students have become familiar with my catch phrase, "just solve the problem" and answering "yes" to either/or questions about how they could approach a creative solution.

I have enjoyed teaching and creating work with all ages from pre-school through graduate students as well as established, mature artists of all backgrounds in locations across the U.S., Europe, Australia and the internet.
The fifteen sentences of my sound score all came from "Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend", edited by Reimond Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf. As Kano is the 14th rune, I started from the opening page of the fourteenth chapter and, utilizing the numbers corresponding with each of the fifteen "action runes" counted sentences forward or backwards from there. For example Elwaz, the seventeenth rune, is my first action rune. As it is inverted in my score I counted backwards from the opening page of Chapter 14 to determine which sentence I would read throughout the twenty four second duration between :14-:38. The next action was signified by the 12th rune which also was inverted so I counted backwards in the book 12 sentences to determine the next sentence to be read. And so on.

The pedestrian movement score was inspired in a large part by the delightful performance by John Cage of his composition Water Walk where he performs rather banal, pedestrian movements to create a theatrical experience.

Utilizing one or more of the five words taken from Ralph Blum's the Book of Runes description of each individual rune that accompanied each action prompt.

For example, the first action prompts include the words "block, timely, missed, hand, avoid".  I decided to clap my hands, missing each time.

My second prompt took from the word "passage", which I interpreted by rolling a marble back and forth through a vacuum cleaner tube.

Inspired by videos I have seen of John Cage where he made the stopping and starting of his stop watch an important part of his performance, I chose to imitate his emphasis upon the stopwatch.