RE: dancers

["samba -" <sambacomet@hotmail.com>]

   I worked as an accompaniest for dancers for 20 years. One approach is 
to 
get the rhythmic  information from the dancers so that one is sort of 
underlining or shading what they're doing rather than providing a rigid 
grid 
  ,different than the way drums and bass lay down groove in band 
situations 
.It's possible to get a really interesting feedback loop this way. It 
would 
be  more difficult with looping,you'd have to ride the tap tempo  
constantly 
,but it could be done. Another way is to do texture instead of groove ,and 
to sort of do dynamic counterpoint,contrasting the empty spaces to make 
them 
stand ou more,sort of, draping  or framing the stage with audio texture . 
I 
must say that it's also entirely possible that you're giving someone the 
impression that you're going to take the spotlight and they're trying to 
put 
you in your place. I've often thought dancer's have the most fragile egos 
of 
all artists-but then I think of working backstage with a particular 
English 
rockstar guitarist who was the bitchiest person I ever encountered-  then 
there were this actor in LA......
Unfortunatley many dancers and many musicians haven't actually experienced 
what happens when you really get entrainment between dancers and players. 
a 
kind of dynamic dialogue that's a really incredible thing,whole cultures 
have been based on it.