Take a body, rather docile (taking out a foldable music stand).
Feet are spread out to the width of the pelvis (spreading the legs of the music stand).
Knees are not stiffened (sliding the music stand).
Tilt the pelvis to circulate energy between the top and bottom (moving the top of the music stand).
The shoulders are relaxed (lowering the music stand shoulders), the arms move away from the body at a similar angle (opening the music stand branches) but in two different directions (finishing opening the music stand).
Take a violin and a bow (taking my violin and bow).
The violin must be supported and positioned in a balanced way (hanging the violin on the music stand by the neck).
Under no circumstances should the violin or bow be “tightened” (hooking the bow to a screw).
The little finger rests on the stick with a rounded shape (hanging the cushion on the edge of the desk).
The head is placed on the cushion, straight and without tension (putting down a score on the music stand).

Beware, step n°2 should only be tackled when step n°1 is fully acquired. If this is not the case, stay as long as it takes, or even indefinitely in step n°1.
Once the body and the violin are well positioned, make gestures. Lots of gestures, loads of gestures.

Even indigestible gestures, your majesty?

[…]

I’ve made a lot of them and yet there are still some left…

[…]

Until I pass my tests, when you’ll be heavy-handed?

[…]

To hell with these gestures!

[…] Mister student, have you had daily gestural intercourse with your violin this week, yes or no? (M. nods yes) Have you had, with your instrument, any gestural intercourse with your instrument that could be described as misplaced? (M. says “No” with his head).

I am specialized in violin gesture. That is to say the movement of my right hand on a north-east axis and on a regular line, according to different combinations of direction, height, length, speed, weight, and the more restricted movement of my left hand on a north-west axis according to similar principles (mimic the gestures without violin, imagining a scale).

The gesture is the means of the sound, the musician is in search of the best possible sound and constantly reworks his gesture to achieve it. The musician, groping to find the gesture perfectly suited to the sound he is aiming for.

And the pleasure of the gesture? Spending so much time making gestures without it being questioned in itself? The musician’s gesture is like the researchers when they invented the microscope: you think you’re going to explore something insignificant because it’s so small and you discover that there is a universe in a grain of sand, or that there is a world of feeling and mobilization in a small gesture. There is something infinitely small, but there is also something infinitely big in the gestures: you have to experience the forces of physics, gravity, balance, pendulum movement, kinetic energy. And then the gestures are sensual, and sensuality is an ultimate goal.

Yet the musician’s business is indeed sounds. And the dancers’ business is the gestures. Each one at home, we can’t all be good at everything.

May be. Sounds can be considered as waves that prolong movements or gestures. The musician’s gesture would be the past of the sound: indeed, we try to reconstruct the events of the past by tracing the thread of noise in space. But that means that the sound would be the future of the gesture! We would just have to be able to produce sounds powerful enough to get out of the atmosphere or machines sophisticated enough to recover the echo of the old sounds. We could know the past and send messages to the future. My gestures one day will disappear, but my sound, will it survive me?

In the gesture there is also a political aspect. If since your birth, you have been shown the gesture as the means of an already known result, there is no more room for creation. Once gestures are incorporated in this way, it’s more difficult to change, you’re not very flexible once you’re disciplined.

So, you have to do both, you also have to explore gesture for gesture, sound for sound, and the relationship between the two.

But then, what if we were to experiment with a whole series of gestures to create new sounds? and new sounds to create new gestures?

What if we looked at musicians the way we look at a dancer?

If we listened to a dancer as we listen to a musician?

What does my sound do to her gesture?

What does his gesture do to our sounds?

What if I made my sound a revolutionary artistic gesture?

And what if we danced?