Beatboxing for Dance Classes at Cornell University

Since the Fall semester of 2007, I have been an Artist in Residence at Cornell University’s Risley Hall, and have been working as an accompanist for up to eight dance classes per week in the Department of Theater, Film and Dance. I provide vocal percussion for Dance I, II and III, Explorations, Improvisation, and Hip Hop, working with Jumay Chu, Joyce Morgenroth, Janice Kovar, Jim Self, Byron Suber, and Allen Fogelsanger, as well as with visiting guest artists from the Paul Taylor II Dance Company.
Beatboxing is an exciting form of music to dance to, an unexpected deviation from traditional instrumentation such as violin, piano, hand drum, or CD accompaniment. With differing sounds, vocalizations and “drum fills,” I do rhythms in styles of funk, hip hop, swing, waltz, 6/8, 5/4, 7/8, house music, drumnbass, rock, 2/4, tango, breakbeat, middle-eastern and most other requests. In the more open formats of Improvisation and Explorations, I can work with the dancers more, drawing on sounds from urban sounds, like traffic, trains and planes, to audio effects, like radio static, drones and filter sweeps, to natural sounds, like oceans, wind, and animals, to atmospheric sounds, such as footsteps, creaks and knocks—as well as different percussive patterns in off-beat time signatures, and also vocalizations such as blues and world-style singing, trumpet solos, upright bass walks and Tuvan-style throat singing.
I was invited to perform live accompaniment to the Dance Department’s Spring Show in 2007, scoring Jim Self’s “N2 Da Fu Cha Cha,” as well multiple year-end dance class showings.