Kwinten Mordijck is a music producer whose extensive back catalogue of work crosses genres of theatre, dance, installation, film and games. He took his first steps into circus with residencies that paired him with aerialist Noémie Deumié in Copenhagen and juggler Villads Bugge Bang in Reims.
You’ve done a lot of collaborative work in the past, especially with theatre. Is that something you fell into, or did you choose it as a way of working?
I started off studying music production, but the course I did was very focused on pop music and I always felt like a bit of an outsider. I was interested in more experimental approaches. One day I saw a call from a theatre that was searching for someone to do the music for a production, and I just went for it.
It was very eye-opening – the experience of being inspired by an existing work, of having to make music that could work together with it, influence it, and shape what the audience feels. It suited me because I’m not really into making music to listen to alone, or doing solo projects. I find it more interesting to see what my music can do within a bigger picture.
That first experience with the theatre company led to another, then another – and I started to get connected a little bit. Later on I also ended up doing some work for dance performances, where it was totally different to make the music because there’s no text to respond to. In a way, that leaves you with more space to make the music.
I can imagine there are a lot of ways you end up collaborating in a larger process – at the beginning, at the end, with recorded music or live music, interactive or ambient…
Yes, but I guess in theatre often you have a director and that gives it a sort of hierarchy. They’ve decided what we’re going to make. The text is usually already there. Then depending on who the director is you might get more or less freedom, or more or less strict instructions. In theatre the first two weeks or so are often spent talking and reading through the text, and that’s when I like to join the process. If I just read the text on my own it’s never as vivid as seeing an actor perform it, and so in those first two weeks I’m usually just listening in and trying stuff out.
In spite of those experiences, Circus Without Circus was your first time working with circus artists. For the first residency with Noémie Deumié how did you decide what ground to cover?
When Noémie and I talked initially, and I asked myself what I wanted to explore, I found it more interesting to work with composition, rather than playing live. In theatre I’ve done both live music and recorded music. But the difference for me is that with recorded music I get to be in the audience and then I can really know what’s going on. I can talk with the director, and see what we’re making. When you’re on stage and it’s live it’s difficult to zoom out. And of course, normally there’s a director or a choreographer who holds the meaning of the piece, but I like to see it too.
And then the other thing I wanted to focus on was exploring spatial sound by setting up multiple speakers around the performance. When you make recorded music or do a concert, the music generally comes from two speakers in front of you. In theatre I’ve always tried to experiment with having more speakers, because if the music just comes from the stage like that then it starts to feel flat, almost like looking at a screen.
If you put in more speakers, and place them around the audience, then you can draw the audience into the work. So I’ve tried to experiment with that in the past, but it’s not always possible because you have to tour, it’s difficult to install it everywhere, you have all these deadlines and things you’re busy with… You don’t have the time to go deep with it.
And how was it doing the composition? When you make music for theatre maybe you have a lot of outside influences – the characters in the story, the set design, the text, language, voices. Circus can have all those things, but often doesn’t. Is there less to respond to when you’re working with movement artists? And was it a challenge to work with Noémie’s style of movement, which is very slowed down, very internalised?
I think when there’s a story and a dramaturgy you definitely look for a sound that fits that. Like if a story is set in the 1980s then you might go there with the sound as well, but it’s not always that literal. What I’ve felt with movement, and this was especially the case with Noémie, is that you have more freedom to start by asking, What kind of music do I want to make? You make something and then you test if it creates a reaction in the movement or fits it visually.
I really liked that Noémie’s movement was super slow. There are a lot of music composers at the moment who’re really interested in church organs and the droney sounds you can get from these extremely long notes. I really like that sound and it’s one of the roots I wanted to explore.
Your second residency was with Villads Bugge Bang, whose work is focused more on physical comedy. How was that match-up?
We started with some Zoom meetings again, like the last time, because it’s good to start with some ideas. Already in the Zoom meetings it was difficult for us to find some common ground, I felt. And then when we started in Reims we had some stuff that we wanted to research, but it wasn’t as concrete as with Noémie.
One of the things he was interested in was people’s walks, and so on the first day we tried that out – we went out into the city, looking for interesting walks, and we filmed some people. Villads asked if I could make music for the walks. And I was like, What do you mean? In his head it was clear what he meant, and I understood what he meant, but I didn’t connect to it. I felt like throughout the residency we kind of missed each other, where he would suggest we try this, I would suggest we try that.
As the end of the residency and the final showing drew closer, it made us change our way of working. We’d been stuck in a research vibe and in (not) finding common ground, but the idea of working towards a performance helped us make things more concrete and made it easier to work. There was less talking and thinking, more doing and deciding, which helped a lot for us. We ended up making a sort of coherent performance which included juggling and making music with microphones with audio-effects on them, testing Villads’ physical limits by letting the music decide how long he should be doing a certain movement, visualising sound by ‘catching’ specific melodies/instruments, surprising audio-effects on objects, and a poetic ending with a metal plate.
Villads is interested in clowning, but most of the time I don’t approach my music in a funny way. One of the things we worked on was this routine Villads does which is like tongue acrobatics. I found it interesting with the music to make him do it very slowly, so that it gets to the point where it’s funny, then not funny and awkward, then back to funny again. So he went along with it, and I went along with his more like in-the-moment funny things, and we made something.
It sounds like kind of a mismatch in terms of different ambitions, different tastes…
I don’t know if it’s purely taste, because I like funny stuff! I like to watch it. But just because I like seeing something doesn’t mean I like making it. Even so, it was interesting to push the boundaries a bit. I ended up juggling with mics in the final showing. I mean, my juggling was really bad, because even when I’m doing live music for a show I’m not really the performer, but it was something totally out of my comfort zone.
What did you take away from the experience of the two residencies?
Well, I was new to circus. Coming in I had a vague idea of what circus could be, but then through Circus Without Circus realised that it can be so much more – that it’s so big. In France and in Copenhagen we also had the chance to see some circus shows, and everything was very different.
I think if I was in the circus world I would be in a real niche of it. I resonated more with Noémie’s approach, where she didn’t want to do anything spectacular – she wanted to be the circus introvert, doing it for herself rather than for the audience. Whereas I think Villads is thinking more about how he can reach the audience, and is more focused on them. Of course you find those two approaches in music as well. In live music there’s this in-the-moment quality to improvisation that really overlaps with circus and can be very interesting to open your mind to.
And has anything concrete come out of your experiences?
I don’t know yet. Spatial sound is on the list of things for further research. But after having these experiences, and kind of contradicting myself from earlier, I think I want to try and make some solo music. To research where that would go and find out what I really want to make.
Interview by John Ellingsworth (April 2023)