Critical Correspondence

MR Festival 2008: Mat Voorter and Thomas Hauert in conversation with Tere O’Connor

Listen to this interview

As this past Fall’s MR Festival – Sidewinder – developed, with performances, talks, workshops and Chinese checkers games, some in-town artists sat to with the out-of-town artists to talk about each others work. The conversations were loosely framed around the theme of improvisation. The first of this series of conversations finds Tere O’Connor talking to Mat Voorter and Thomas Hauert. Voorter and Hauert performed during the first weekend of the Festival at Danspace Project (December 4-6, 2008). They did a duet and were also part of the creation and performance of improvisational scores based on Chinese checkers games with Steve Paxton. O’Connor speaks of his own work vis a vis the often posed as dual relationship between improvisation and set work, setting a framework for discussion with terms like rigidity and freedom, intuition and objectivity, editing, and ‘a way of living’. The interview is about 29 minutes long. Enjoy.