Duo d'Entre-Deux
Dance Collaboration
Comprised of saxophonists Nick Zoulek (USA) and Tommy Davis (Canada), Duo d'Entre Deux presents high-energy, interdisciplinary performances that merge contemporary sound with expressive motion. Formed in Paris in 2011, Duo d'Entre-Deux found a shared passion in alternative chamber music experiences. Since then, they have enthralled audiences in Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and across the United States, presenting recitals, working with multimedia artists, and collaborating with dancers from Wild Space Dance Company, Zenon Dance, Danceworks, and the Like You Mean It dance company.
In addition to their virtuosic saxophone abilities, each member of the duo holds a strong foundation in other forms of movement-based art, including Ukrainian dance, rock climbing, extreme skating, and even break dancing. Drawing from these experiences, the duo's understanding of communicative motion manifests itself in contemporary performance, as the duo intertwines motion with music.
With a strong background in improvisation, the duo incorporates interaction, interpretation, and idiomatic sound into their unique performances. A modular saxophone duo, Tommy and Nick perform on a variety of saxophones, ranging from sopranino to bass, presenting a wide spectrum of colours and styles.
The duo ardently supports contemporary music, commissioning and premiering works by Jason Charney, Robert Lemay, Denis Levaillant, Etienne Rolin Michael Lanci, Mikel Kuehn, and Scott Rubin. The duo's enthusiasm for new music is a staple in their collaborative performances, as they merge pertinent new music with modern dance.
"The lush saxophone playing of Duo d'Entre-Deux...[interacted] with the dancers and drawing ambient sound from the room itself. Their contribution to Luminous was profound. Beautiful harmonies sang in contrast to mysterious knockings and hums, and finally to ungodly, soul-shattering blasts."
— Shepherd Express
"The musicians [took] center stage, and they are extraordinary players. They use overblowing to create symphonic textures from only two instruments, and they used the vast volume of the space to create unearthly echos...[taking] you to other worlds."
— Milwaukee Magazine
"Duo d'Entre-Deux, musicians Tommy Davis and Nick Zoulek, accompanied the dancers with a sonic palette of saxophones, singing bowls, percussion effects, and a few curiosities, such as "woodwind" sounds created with garden or vacuum cleaner hoses"
— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Carried Away
Roulette, Brooklyn, NY
Carried Away explores shifting relationships between moving bodies, live music, projected images, Roulette's unusual performance space and the audience. Known for site-based work, Debra Loewen incorporates architectural structures at hand, providing a shifting perspective of experience. Utilizing both improvisational scores and set material, dancers and musicians navigate the space in an intricate exchange of ideas. Their interactions will be framed with intimate proximity or glimpsed from distant perspective. Moving and still vignettes occur simultaneously connecting threads of a shared language with music, dance and the built environment, while the audience relocates to new viewing areas. Film loops hint of landscapes- a slow shifting of graphite shards; birds gather and disappear; a large white cat named Douglas watches everyone. The space prompts visible plots for unanticipated directions, thwarted plans and interruptions. Random moments surprise and disappear. Events come and go, snippets of both familiar and vaguely understood movements pass, hurtle onward, collide. We look around, engage and get carried away with questions about what might happen.
Mitchell Park Domes, Milwaukee, WI
"A wild space under glass inside the new Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory Annex, where uncontrollable nature, creative daring and the physical poetry of dance come together. In collaboration with Duo d'Entre-Deux saxophonists, Wild Space dancers will move among the growing shadows and shifting reflections beneath the greenhouse glass vault. As dusk turns to night, rain, clouds, wind or clear starry skies transform each site-based performance into a one-of-a-kind experience."