Sans Trou Ni Fin (without hole or end) is a collaborative work with Biba Bell. It was premiered on June 26th, 2025, as a site-specific movement piece. I made the music and designed the playback system. The show was about 45 minutes and had a total of four performances on June 26th and 27th, 2025.   

Form 

The show has six dancers, one reader, and a Detroit house with a remarkable design. Biba’s program notes below describe the experiences of audience members during the show. 

Sound Design and Composition

I visited the site a few months before the premiere, took notes and photos, and composed music. I made three different but correlated 10-minute pieces that will be played simultaneously on three sides of the center garden. I have also added a fourth sound that will be played back from a portable speaker. During the performance, a dancer walked with the portable speaker and visited the three sites. 

Below is a diagram showing a customized playback system for the show. It consists of three portable speakers, one subwoofer, a multi-channel audio interface, and a PC running Ableton Live. 

The tracks in the soundtrack album match the labels in the diagram.

The three places, the Library, Living Room, and Kitchen, each have their own music (tracks 3, 4, and 5), and Traveler intermittently visits them with a fourth sound (track 6, an abbreviated version of the original 30-minute file). The first track, named Sans Trou Ni Fin – Part I, is a simulation of all of the sounds playing together. Sans Trou Ni Fin – Part II is played at the last 10 minutes of the piece, where all dancers gather in the center garden. The windows to the garden are open for the last movement, allowing sound to travel with fewer obstructions. Part II also uses a subwoofer to add a low-frequency thump. During the shows, I was cueing the sound from a storage room, doors closed and hidden from the audience. 

The composition process consists of combining new and old techniques. SuperCollider codes used in End Credits, Save Point By The Lake, Tree Breezes, and Hold Drum became the starting points for the pieces. I edited the codes so that the resulting sounds are in the same key, tempo, and duration. For the ending, I added a slow version of Mellotron 7. During the rehearsal, the team wanted a 60-second-long transition sound to be played while the audience moved to another room. I quickly assembled the transition sound with a drone from Living Room. I did not upload the transition music.  

Remarks

Sans Trou Ni Fin was a second collaboration with Biba (info about the first collaboration is here). Biba brings out the beauty of the immobile space with the mobile human bodies. Her work has the best “here-and-now” experience a live performance can create.  And the performers, Hunter, Ta’Rajee, Matthew, Elizabeth, Aaron, and Chris, delivered it with 200%. I am grateful to work with the crew. 

Update 11/25/2025

One of the artists, Matthew Piper, wrote a beautiful article about the performance. Read about it here!

https://www.matthewjpiper.com/post/haunting-the-house-notes-on-dance-and-space

As for the documentation, the two performances are now available on Vimeo