The Headwindy City

by A.D. Amorosi

performance

Rick Henderson's Eno-like band The Wayward Wind has had a longstanding creative relationship with the performers of Headlong Dance Theater and New Paradise Laboratories. Henderson scored a majority of those modern-movers' Fringe efforts, and the dancers participated in his Wayward Wind CD release parties. But for his latest project, one he's titling (for the moment) "Accumulation Process," Henderson is calling it halfsies by involving as many dancers as musicians in what sounds like a cross between backgammon and wrestling.

Henderson is using many of the same musicians involved with 2000's Drenched & Drained album (Jim McGuinn and Rosie MacNamara-Jones, exes of Cordalene and The Low Road, respectively; Henderson's own Eltro mate Ted Johnson; Gentlemen 4's Ramon Sender and more), as well as dancers David Brick, Amy Smith, Andrew Simonet, Kate Watson-Wallace, Olase Freeman and Jeb Kreager. He's been pushing this group to act as one for the last six months. Literally — this team of 13 participants improvise collectively as an ensemble. "It's both music and movement created simultaneously," says Henderson of the Independence Foundation-funded project, which is presented as a work in progress.

"We've been getting together on an irregular basis for the past six months," he says. "During these rehearsals, several songs have been constructed out of what were once improvs and added back into the process as potential structures for choreographed pieces." From there, the musicians follow the dancers, themselves becoming movement artists, while the dancers have been contributing to the musical process in every way possible. Each member either precipitates or follows another's improvised move, note or rhythm. "It's like a weird chess game," says McGuinn. "Like nothing I've ever done or experienced before."

Accumulation Process, Fri., Jan. 28 and Sat., Jan. 29, 8 p.m., $10, Spirit Wind Performance Space, 213 New St., 215-769-2012, www.schwa-disk.com.