Trevor Brown is an Australian freelance composer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, sound installation artist, occasional academic, and radio presenter who works across several artistic and cultural fields. He is Artistic Director of S.I.C.K.O. (Sydney Improvisers Composers Kollektiv Orchestra), an ensemble of Sydney’s finest composers, performers and improvisers bringing new exploratory music/sound/performance to Sydney and the world.. Brown is currently completing a Doctor of Music Arts at the Sydney Conservatorium on Composing with Volatile Media (playing with fire, working with the unknown and the uncontrollable via improvised conduction, technological interventions, multi-art form, collaboration, and environmental composition). As a composer and sound designer, he worked with Australia’s Sydney Dance Company and Dance North, and internationally with dance groups such as Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Teatro Du(ex-Pina Bausch), and Koa Art Collective.

Podcast with Trevor was recorded on 30 December 2019, in a bustling green room of the Woodford Folk Festival. The podcast was edited and produced on the Gadigal land of Eora nation, traditional custodians of the land on which we live, work, and dance. We pay our respect to their elders, past present and emerging.

Podcast image is by Lena Kramaric.
Music used is by Trevor Brown.

Artemis Projects production, commissioned by Delving into Dance and Critical Path for the Interchange Festival.

Podcast with Trevor Brown (full transcript)

Ira Ferris: What are the first three words that come to your mind when you think about dance?

Trevor Brown: Movement. Expression. Body.

Ira Ferris: What do you think about this idea that some people have about themselves that they can’t dance?

Trevor Brown: Well it's an interesting thing, cause I think that anyone moving in space is in a sense dancing and it doesn't even have to be consciously dancing. For example, someone cooking is in a sense doing a dance in the kitchen, moving between spaces. I'm thinking of some friends in Italy who were all cooking at the same time and it was like a beautiful dance of these three women, and the way they moved in the kitchen was just as choreographed as a dance, but they probably didn't think they were dancing.

Ira Ferris: Have you ever on the dance floor seen somebody and thought: Oh, this person shouldn't be dancing?

Trevor Brown: No. I think that when you see people doing even some weird and angular and uncomfortable movements, it is good that they are doing it cause it expresses internal-ness. There's this guy that you see often in Sydney at our gigs; an old guy with a funny hat and beard, and he just, … he looks like what we would call a crazy person, jabbering around the front of the room, but he's having the time of his life and totally expressing himself. Quivers and shakes and gesticulates and stomps up and down, and …

Ira Ferris: What does dance mean to you?

Trevor Brown: Dance is one of those words, … like poetry. It means many things. It doesn't just mean the physical movement of body, even though that's the first three things that I said earlier when you asked about the three words. It's, it's actually, … It's a physical marcation of time. I mean, that's a sort of analytical way of looking at it, but it's a physical demarcation of time. In the same way as time passes in music, it's changing of aural states. Or even if those aural states don’t change, it's still significant. And in the same way someone could be standing totally still but it's a dance, cause it's conscious, or even unconscious demarcation of time, physically.

Ira Ferris: What do you think stops some people from dancing?

Trevor Brown: Self-consciousness.

Ira Ferris: What are they afraid of?

Trevor Brown: Looking silly. Or even more than that. I noticed that dancing myself, sometimes I just don't think I'm dancing right to this music. I’m just not feeling connected. And that's especially in where we are, at Woodford Folk Festival, where there are ways to dance to certain sorts of music and there are lessons in classes on how to do that. And then when you know how to do it, or are being taught how to do it, you have a handle on it. But since the 60s, when it was all about free dancing and people stopped dancing together and with a partner, it is all about expressing yourself… But people don’t know what to express sometimes. I think that's what stops people dancing. They don't know how to express themselves. You can do anything you want. Well… that's, … That's paralysis by choice, as opposed to this is how you dance to this music.

Ira Ferris: You mentioned, if I got this right, that some music doesn't inspire you to dance to as much; that there is a particular kind of music that inspires you more than other…

Trevor Brown: No. Say for example, there’s some music that has a very particular way of dancing to it, like some Persian music. There's a way to dance to it. I wouldn't know how to do it unless I was shown. I can express myself but it's like going to a foreign country and they serve up food and utensils you’ve never used and you don't know do you squeeze the lemon first or what's that bowl for, do you wash your hands in it or do you drink out of it? That sort of thing.

Ira Ferris: So, do you think it would be offensive to dance in a way that's not traditional, to invent your own dance?

Trevor Brown: I just know from experience. I know I can fake salsa dancing like the best of them, but when I'm with salsa dancers, it just freaks them out because they have a way of dancing and I'm not following the right steps and they’re like: I just can’t dance with you. If I went there and said just show me how to do it, and I've learned the steps, … But I go in there thinking I can fake it and it just throws them out and it makes them feel bad because they can't do their stuff. So yeah, I'm traumatised by salsa dancing, just being left on the dance floor. It's terrible. [laughs]

Ira Ferris: How similar is improvised dancing to improvise music?

Trevor Brown: Totally similar. The same.

Ira Ferris: Except it seems to me that in improvised music you still need to know how to play an instrument…

Trevor Brown: No, no, no. Because a lot of improvised music is about how not to play an instrument. It’s about how to find ways to make sounds that aren't normal, aren’t normally produced by the instrument. It's about explorations of all the cracks and crevices in between of what we know. And I think the same processes are involved in improvised dance. It's utilizing what you have to pass the passage of time, mark it with some sound or movement. I think it's very similar. And what I find, what is interesting is that a lot of trained dancers are not very good improvisers because they're doing their shtick, which is what a lot of improvise music is about, trying to get rid of your shtick and do stuff that hasn't been heard before. But for lot of trained dancers, it's very hard to get away from their pointy toes and their wafty arms.

Ira Ferris: To let go…

Trevor Brown: Yes.

Ira Ferris: Is that similar with music?

Trevor Brown: Yeah, for sure.

Ira Ferris: Have you ever experienced stillness within dance?

Trevor Brown: Uh, yeah. Yeah.

Ira Ferris: Some people speak about it as stillness, some as disappearance, some as grounding...

Trevor Brown: There's a piece of music…  I remember once when I was 18 or 19, and I had my first share-house at university and I was setting up for a party and there was this old stereo system that I set up and I was testing out to see how it sounded, and I put on some music I wasn't very familiar with, and I didn't know much about it, but it was Tim Buckley. And I remember having this dance by myself in this room that was set up and I was just by myself and I danced for the length of this track which was about eight or nine minutes and I totally left myself and fully expressed myself for the first time. And I still use that track when I'm DJ-ing sometimes, more than 30 years later. It brings back to me that sound, that feeling of totally losing myself.

Ira Ferris: Is improvised music, and then improvised dance, in any way related to uncertainty?

Trevor Brown: Yeah. Because you are creating the world as you go and it involves uncertainty but it also involves, if you're improvising with others, an enormous trust and non-judgment because you can think you're heading in a certain direction and someone else makes a choice and you're in another direction that totally changes where you think you were and your world turns inside out, upside down and you just have to believe that that's now where you are and it's not where you thought you were. And so, its uncertainty but it's also trust.

Ira Ferris: Is it trust or is it respect?

Trevor Brown: Both.

Ira Ferris: So does it then matter with whom you dance or with whom you play music?

Trevor Brown: If those things are understood then no. If everyone has this level of trust and respect and other things like ego are put aside. Respecting that people have their own pace and their own way. But that's hard to find because it's hard to find people where trust, respect and ego are in balance. It’s really hard to find people who can have all these at the same time.

Ira Ferris: Have you ever tried dancing in silence?

Trevor Brown: For sure. Yes.

Ira Ferris: How does that feel? What are you moving to then?

Trevor Brown: Well, you are talking to a musician who hears music in silence. But then, I'm also responding to the music of the blood in my veins. I don't know. There's music and sound everywhere. There's no such thing as silence. And then also… ideas have sound.

Ira Ferris: So, you are thinking of something when you dance?

Trevor Brown: Well, you are still your blank canvas but you are considering what to do: will I move my hand, will I move my shoulders, will I breath, will I do this or that. I suppose you have your internal process of how should I approach this? So, there is thought, but then there's also a feeling. And then it's also, once again, balancing thought and feeling.

Ira Ferris: What made you dance in silence?

Trevor Brown: Well one time, it may have been my dance/theatre teacher who said: now you will dance in silence. Other times it could have been particular mood or experience.

Ira Ferris: I've never danced in silence. I never had an urge to dance in silence. Because for me dancing is so related to music. Music makes me want to move. The rhythm.

Trevor Brown: Yeah but for me as a musician/composer, my job is finding music in silence. And then… I used to write a lot of my music while walking. I used to walk half an hour home from school every day and I'd write tunes in that time, get home and write them down on paper. Just cause walking gives you a rhythm. It’s silence but there's a rhythm. And, um, … I mean I'm thinking of, you know, like when you just feel moved to move, you know. It might be on a headland and there's a moonrise over the ocean and you feel like moving. It may express itself as yoga or stretching or some sort of dynamic yoga sort of thing. But that's still a dance in a sense, isn't it?

Ira Ferris: Well, I did yoga many times in silence. Mostly, always in silence. I don't know if I would think of it as dance.

Trevor Brown: But have you done a free-form yoga when you would move one posture into another and into another?

Ira Ferris: Yeah. Yeah. But that's because of my training, or my very early exchange with dance, this idea of one movement moving into the other is just almost like a natural thing.

Trevor Brown: Have you ever invented sequences of yoga moves?

Ira Ferris: Yeah.

Trevor Brown: So it’s choreographing in a sense…

Ira Ferris: Yeah… And intuition and everything falls into it.

Trevor Brown: And also feeling.

Ira Ferris: Well, there is always feeling in movement. I mean, I'm always conscious of movement.

Trevor Brown: Well I can question that looking at some dancers, you know. Particularly trained contemporary dancers. Is there any feeling in that?

Ira Ferris: Yeah. I have observed that trained dancers sometimes fear moving.

[silence]

Ira Ferris: I'm sure you can imagine this but, well, imagine it: the world where everyone would dance, where there would be no person who would think that they can't dance, and maybe the days would begin with a dance. What would that world look like?

Trevor Brown: It would looked like Woodford Folk Festival, if you're up early enough to do the early morning dance classes. [laughs] Or stay awake long enough to dance through the night. The first few times that I came here, we used to see how long we could continually dance. We would dance between the stage and then dance and dance and dance the entire day, and then do it again the next day and do four or five days of continuous dancing.

Ira Ferris: There are still people here who don't dance, don’t you think? People who sit and listen to music.

Trevor Brown: Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I've observed that when you're dancing you listen differently. There are different modes of listening and so if you really want to listen, you don't dance because you are thinking about other things, you're thinking about where your feet are, etc. But if you really want to take it all in from that one sense, then maybe you wouldn't dance. I'm torn often. Like today, I was watching Boban Markovic Orchestra from Serbia and for the first bit I just had to take it in. I couldn't dance even though it was the dance-iest music I've heard in years, but I just had to take it in. I couldn't dance cause my ears have overloaded with just trying to work out what the hell was going on.

Ira Ferris: Yeah. I found myself stopping few times when it was the most powerful musically, almost as a sign of respect which is interesting because we often offer silence as a sign of respect and that stopping in stillness is also a sign of that, in a way. What role does stillness play in your life generally?

Trevor Brown: What role does it play? Uh, of late it is a desirable but unattainable situation, but it's very important. It's the place where everything starts and I suppose it's also an end.

Ira Ferris: When do you experience yourself being still?

Trevor Brown: Practicing my instrument. Performing, playing when I'm just totally in that moment of not thinking and just able to play. And if I allow myself to find stillness, and this is something you have to concentrate on.

Ira Ferris: You do?

Trevor Brown: I have to concentrate to find stillness of late because I feel my life has been fairly hectic. But it’s something I’m meditating on - finding more stillness, as much stillness as I would like.

Ira Ferris: When you walked and wrote music, did you feel still in those moments?

Trevor Brown: It's like the theory of relativity. It's like if you're traveling at the same speed as the thing next to you, it looks like you're not traveling. And if you're in a good rhythm, you're totally still in a sense, cause you're in your creative world. And I think good music is like that where it feels like you're still, even though you're moving and dancing. You know, when a dance floor is just cooking and everyone is just grooving and everyone is able to synchronize and the music is flowing and the people are flowing, that’s a beautiful stillness in a sense, isn’t it?

Ira Ferris: Harmony.

Trevor Brown: Yes, harmony.

Ira Ferris: Akram Khan, choreographer and dancer, says that the only time he is still is when he dances. Which makes me think of that concept of being in your element.

Trevor Brown: Yeah, but only if you're in your element. Like you know, sometimes I can be playing a concert and I'm struggling and I'm not still. And I know it only because I know what it is like to be still in this situation… It's actually, … I used this for a documentary I made years ago on poetry, What is poetry?, and a guy said poetry is like being in the zone, like in sport when you kick the ball and it goes in the goal and it's a beautiful pass and everything is flowing. Poetry is like that. And dance is like that. And stillness is like that.

Ira Ferris: It seems to me connected to that thing you said earlier about losing yourself. You are almost erased. And you maybe experience full connection with the space.

Trevor Brown: Well it's like this concept of Zen; Zen and the Art of Archery, where you are the target, and you are the arrow hitting the target. You become the thing. You let your ego fall away, you let everything fall away, you just are the thing. If Zen is anything, it's about stillness.

Ira Ferris: I feel stillness when I walk. That's why the ideas can come for me then. I feel more restless when I sit.

Trevor Brown: Well, Zen is the art of no mind, is that how they call it? Maybe I’m paraphrasing.

Ira Ferris: Maybe the art of no thought. Mind is still there, but the clutter is gone and thoughts become clear and you declutter and yeah,… Many people speak about being able to write, whether it’s music or text, or figure out philosophical issues or whatever when they walk.

[silence]

Ira Ferris: What does concept ‘spatial awareness’ signify for you?

Trevor Brown: [laughs] Oh, it's definitely a generational thing. I just noticed it at this festival, young people have no concept of spatial awareness I think because of telephones and they've just been brought up in a virtual world. They don't realize they're standing in the middle of the doorway while texting or walking with their head down or just shouting loudly, standing next to someone. They just have no concept of space. They are in virtual worlds since birth and just have lost this sense. And the more time you spend in cities, in our automated society where everything has been done for us, you lose your sense of direction. Oh, where are we going? Oh, I’ll just look at my phone and look at the map. What did we do before that? We'd remember! You look up the street directory once and you remember how to go 50 kilometres with 20 street turns. But now, you check your phone every 3Ks to make sure you're going in the right direction.

Ira Ferris: We would also in the past allow for more time for the potential of getting lost on our way to somewhere. Which is actually a beautiful thing, this idea of allowing for the time to get lost. Not needing to reach the destination as quickly as we now want to reach it. It is with everything. It is with finding answers to questions. Everything needs to happen instantaneously. While in the past, even communication, you know, sending the letter to someone or, … And the same with reaching a destination spatially.

[silence]

Ira Ferris: What would you say? Why does dance matter now?

Trevor Brown: Why does dance matter? Because dance, like I said earlier, is like poetry; it is a condensed expression of thought or emotion and there's not enough of that. I would like to see our politicians dancing. Maybe we don't let them talk at the next election, we just let them dance and we judge them for their movements.

Ira Ferris: I don't think they would stand a chance.

[both laughing]

Trevor Brown: We’d end up with anarchy.

Ira Ferris: Well, it's interesting because according to some things I was reading, it's politicians who want to prohibit dance.

Trevor Brown: Well sure! Yeah! That's why dance matters. Because it's an important, … well I want to say equalizer in some sense. Because like you were saying; if you want to judge someone on the way they move, then that's not their issue, it's yours. You need to deal with your judgment issues, not their movement issues. I think that's why dance matters.

Follow Trevor’s practice:

Website: trevorbrownmusic.com
Instagram: @trevorbrownmusic
Soundcloud: @trevorbrownmusic