After working with Anderson last year on our first project together When I Left the Room, this latest piece Intimacy of the Skin offered us a chance to integrate the music and sound design even deeper into the narrative of the performance.  From the beginning, Anderson brought me into the research process to understand where the performance is coming from.  In addition to reading some of the same source material Anderson read to create this project, I’ve also been exploring new ways of creating music with his guidance.  The seed for the first sketch which eventually turned into the track “Breathe”, I wrote was entirely Anderson’s idea, and it was very intuitive and natural to create.  The approach was simple: 1) record myself reflecting on and talking about my past, 2) create an illustration while thinking about what I just talked about, and 3) improvise a piece of music on my saxophone while reflecting further.  These three creations gave me the building blocks to create a very personal piece of music, and it gave Anderson a visual component to add to the performance in the form of my drawing.  They all came from a very intimate place within me, and this is what the performance is all about.  Once those pieces were there, I spent a lot of time breaking them down and reorganizing them into something totally new, combining the voice memo with the improvisation.  As with the other pieces in the project, the improvisatory nature of the music keeps everything honest, intimate, and in the moment. Through this work I’ve been able to explore new techniques of audio manipulation, sampling, and audio-visual storytelling I’ve never tried before.

Intimacy of the Skin is more than just an album to me.  It weaves together the lived experiences of people from around the world into an emotional journey, and each piece is as unique as the emotional themes it explores: love, loss, trauma, anxiety, intimacy, jealousy, euphoria, the whole range of the human experience.  I hope that this music, in its audio-only form, will take you on a similar journey to that which Anderson and the ACDC dancers brought to Capetown in May.

Voice memos and recordings on “A Way Through”, “Architects”, “Bianca’s Walk”, and “Intimacy of the Skin” provided by Alice Maybin, Anneke Claassen, Bianca Rijkmans, and Nicolas Laubscher.

Vocals on “Intimacy of the Skin” written by Anderson Carvalho and performed by Talia Lewis.

Album cover photograph by Michelle Hughes.

This music originally premiered as a part of the dance performance Intimacy of the Skin in Capetown, South Africa in May 2023 by Anderson Carvalho Dance & Choreography.  All of the music was performed, produced, mixed, and mastered by Adam Claussen

Read more about the dance performance on The Cape Robyn

Read more about Anderson Carvalho's work