Composing Graveyards and Gardens

Saturday March 7th
1:30PM – 3:00PM
Halifax Central Library, Room 301

The conversation centres on how Graveyards and Gardens was built as a true co-creation: not choreography set to music, nor music composed for dance, but an evolving system where sound and movement were composed in tandem. Goodman and Shaw discuss how the work emerged through reciprocal exchange — scores written in response to physical tasks, movement phrases shaped by musical architecture, and moments of silence or suspension that allowed both forms to breathe.

They will unpack how the title itself reflects the work’s compositional ethos: graveyards as sites of memory, accumulation, and residue; gardens as spaces of growth, cultivation, and renewal. The artists explore how these metaphors informed the structure of the piece — layering repetition, decay, harmony, rupture, and regeneration into both the choreographic and sonic landscapes.

Topics include:

• Co-authorship and dissolving disciplinary hierarchies
• Generative systems and structured improvisation in both music and dance
• The translation of rhythm, phrasing, and texture across body and voice
• Trust, and vulnerability in long-distance collaboration
• How interdisciplinary process reshapes each artist’s independent practice

Through dialogue, reflection, and selected process insights, Goodman and Shaw offer a transparent look at how Graveyards and Gardens became a living conversation between mediums—a work in which
composition is not fixed but cultivated through attentive exchange.

This talk is ideal for composers, choreographers, interdisciplinary artists, students, and anyone
interested in how collaborative practice can expand the possibilities of form.