happier.rx: Gracie Fagan on Process, Collaboration, and Experimentation in Music and Dance

Organized by the AMS Music and Dance Study Group.

In this in-person presentation and performance at the University of Michigan, live-streamed to the AMS Annual Meeting, composer Gracie Fagan discusses the intersections of music and dance in her compositional process, as well as her conceptualization of their relationship as a whole. Her unique immersion in dance through studios, her parents’ professional careers at American Ballet Theatre, and exposure to a diverse range of styles from her incorporations of movement. To Fagan, dance has proved to be integral in her pursuit to expand audience engagement with musical performance and art itself. With choices deeply influenced by perspective, gesture, and shape, her compositions are built upon intentionality between music and media aspects—such as light, costuming, set design, and projection mapping—Fagan’s work has quickly become associated with pioneering and experimental interdisciplinary approaches.

The premiere performance of rx.happier will follow the presentation. This new work comments upon the general public’s perception of bipolar disorder in comparison to the experience of those affected by it. Dancers represent the affliction itself, their movement creating a dynamic representation and experience of the disorder along with fixed media music.