If you’ve ever attempted to bust a move to Mogwai or the Kronos Quartet, you might be aware that a pop-and-lock routine just won’t do. Modern-dance troupes, however, have found the cinematic end of the underground-rock scene useful.

In 2004, Portland, Ore., art-pop trio Menomena composed music for local troupe Monster Squad, resulting in Under An Hour, a three-part performance inspired by the U.S. government’s reaction to terrorist attacks (“under an hour” is the military’s response time for a counterattack).

Washington, D.C.’s Tone, a 15-year-old instrumental ensemble whose members’ lineage stretches back to punk bands the Teen Idles and Government Issue, also began working with modern dance in 2004. In January of this year, Tone collaborated with the Bowen McCauley Dance Company by providing the music for Amygdala, a performance at the Kennedy Center in D.C.

MAGNET spoke to Tone percussionist Gregg Hudson and guitarist Norm Veenstra about modern dance and the recent release of the group’s sixth album, Solidarity (Neurot).

How did Tone first become involved with the Bowen McCauley Dance Company? What attracted the group to working with dance?
Norm Veenstra: We have been on a quest for a number of years to pursue any opportunities to expand our music and performances outside of the standard “rock” environment—be it film scoring, festivals, alternative spaces and certainly dance. We’ve always felt that Tone music was more than just rock, and want chances to present this music in as many contexts as possible, and thus to potentially numerous different yet receptive audiences. Whenever possible, we put this attitude out there, and fortunately for us, Lucy Bowen McCauley heard us.

Gregg Hudson: My wife is a dancer and has been pushing me for years to explore the possibilities of what can happen when girls in tights meet boys with instruments. I was skeptical at first, but found myself making a deeper connection to the world of dance each time I saw a company performing to intense modern music. As an ensemble, we realized that we were comfortable sharing our music with other artists and other mediums but frightened by the idea of losing some creative control. Our challenge was to find someone who would actually collaborate with us as we ventured into new territory. Norm and I did an interview on WETA (D.C.’s public radio station) in the fall of 2003 to promote some upcoming performances and we mentioned our ongoing desire to expand our performance mediums, including working with a dance company. After her husband John McCauley heard this particular interview, Lucy Bowen McCauley came to a show of ours, and was impressed enough to start working on some choreography to several of our songs.

What’s the process of composing pieces for the dance company? I assume there is a great deal of work with Lucy in order to match dance movements to musical ones.
Veenstra: It’s been a combination of brainstorming collectively about themes and numerous rounds of back and forth with musical ideas, both initial impulses and fully formed works. Tone presented a quantity of songs, parts and pieces nearly a year ago to Lucy to generate kinetic energy for the new work. Lucy reacted and selected material befitting her direction. She worked with the chosen pieces as we completed them, yet also concurrently began some movement work based on her conceptual ideas before hearing completed versions of our material. As we had previously with Telemetry—the work performed with Bowen-McCauley Dance in 2004—we endeavored to maintain an ability to be flexible within our arrangements; as Lucy needed changes to works, we created modified versions. 2005 was a year of intense work on a very specific set of music, to say the least.

The Washington Post review of Amygdala basically said the performance was, at times, too loud. Do you think the writer was missing the point?
Hudson: I think the Post’s reviewer brought intellectual knife to an emotional gunfight and missed the point of what modern music and modern dance continually strive to accomplish. Our third invitation to perform at the Kennedy Center was certainly not going to be another predictable evening of traditional dance accompanied by a pre-recorded string section. The Amygdala collaboration is meant to envelop the audience in layers of sonic dynamics and emotional symbolism that build over the course of three movements. The fluctuations in volume are controlled and intentional. They purposefully contribute to the rise and fall of the intensity you see on stage. Lucy has choreographed her dancers to symbolize what happens when emotions succumb to primal fear and desperate aggression. We’re attempting to guide the journey with an appropriate piece of music. You can’t do that with a piano and a glass of champagne.

Music is presented in so many different contexts: Sometimes it’s just musicians on stage; sometimes there are video screens; sometimes music is scoring a movie or being piped in over the drugstore PA. What do you like (or dislike) about how music is presented in conjunction with dance? What is special about how the two art forms interact?
Veenstra: One of the primary reasons Tone is instrumental is not to avoid any direct meaning within a song, but rather to have the music stand on its own. Modern dance, while adding a visual component to our music, is still extremely subtle, not overt, and thus enables a patron to formulate his/her own reactions from the two forms intertwined. Meaning is added, but still without direct meaning. From an internal point of view, I think the ensemble (Tone) helps the company (BMDC) and vice versa in that there is an intense energy from a live performance of either discipline. This is mutually felt and generates better performances out of each collective. BMDC members have told us on countless occasions that the energy of our live sound always makes for more intense movement for them.

Hudson: For me, what’s special about each art form is watching it in the live context. Listening to a loud recording is great, but I’m waiting for the artists to actually perform the work right in front of me. I want to watch how the musicians communicate with each other, see how they physically approach their instruments and, of course, witness the music take on a life of its own. It can be the same with dance. Listening to a dancer’s feet hit the stage and watching their bodies flow and contort as the sweat flies accross the spotlight enables me to appreciate the difficulty and beauty of their craft. Experiencing the two art forms combined is almost an overload on the senses. But sometimes that’s what’s necessary in helping me to remember that people are capable of amazing and profound things.

Many of Tone’s album titles (Solidarity, Structure, Sustain) convey the music’s continuity and rigidness. What attracts you and the other group members to this sense of order?
Veenstra: All in the ensemble have been playing music for a great deal of time, going back to Geordie Grindle’s contributions to punk and hardcore in the Teen Idles many years ago. We take our music seriously, and are not comfortable with any “novelty” or “party” connotations some rock music enjoys. Rather, the music and the arrangements within should come across in virtually every piece. Many of us have an interest in classical/orchestral music, thus some aspects of our writing and aesthetic are influenced by that.

What’s coming up next for you?
Veenstra: 2006 is our 15th year of doing this ensemble, and performing at the Kennedy Center for the first weekend of the year was a great start. Later this spring there will be a Tone performance that will be remixed live by 302 ACID in an exciting performance space. We are working on having collaborative recordings and releases with our friends in Tulsa Drone, Maserati and any of our other friends who would be interested. And most of all, we hope to be on a supporting tour this fall with any of our stellar instrumental peers such as Mono, Pelican, Cult Of Luna, Dirty Three, Explosions In The Sky or Rachel’s.