Music For Dance
Lawson White has spent much of his life making music in rooms where people move. As a composer, sound designer, percussionist, and multi-instrumentalist, he has performed for and collaborated with some of the defining choreographers of the last half century—including Merce Cunningham, Eliot Feld, and Shen Wei—on stages and in spaces including Lincoln Center, The Joyce Theater, and Park Avenue Armory.
That work shaped how he hears: music not simply as accompaniment to a body, but as a shared field of attention—sound, movement, architecture, and audience existing in active relationship. It is the thread connecting those earlier projects to his current practice: composing and improvising with dancers, and developing interdisciplinary work for theaters, galleries, museums, film, and installation.
Selected work is below. For commissions, performances, and collaborations: lawson@lawsonwhite.com
Shen Wei Dance Arts — Undivided Divided
Press & Documentation: Park Avenue Armory · Shen Wei Dance Arts · Washington Post review · DanceTabs review · Hyperallergic review
Co-composer · Sound Designer
World premiere: Park Avenue Armory, New York · 2011
Created during Shen Wei Dance Arts’ year-long residency at Park Avenue Armory, Undivided Divided was a site-specific world premiere that transformed the Wade Thompson Drill Hall into an environment the audience entered and navigated. Dancers performed across a grid of platforms and plexiglass enclosures amid paint, projections, and sculptural materials while listeners moved among them.
Collaborating with Sō Percussion—the ensemble he performed in from 2003 to 2008—Lawson co-composed the original score and served as Sound Designer, creating an 8.4-channel surround mix for the drill hall.
Music and sound operated as part of the architecture rather than as accompaniment from a fixed stage—altering the audience’s perception of distance, intimacy, texture, time, and bodily presence. The work was later presented at venues including the American Dance Festival, the Kennedy Center, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Quotes:
“With the music cresting and colors blooming around you … you’re in an emotional spin, too.”
— Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post
“Beautiful, enormously striking visually”
— Mary Ellen Hunt, San Francisco Chronicle
“...the music, a frequently haunting original score by So Percussion, alternates with Lawson White’s concrete soundscape.”
— Aimée Ts’ao, DanceTabs
Merce Cunningham Dance Company — Ocean
Press & Documentation: Merce Cunningham Trust · The New Yorker · Walker Art Center · Walker history essay · Playbill documentation · Dance Magazine review
Percussionist · 112-musician orchestra
Lincoln Center Festival · Rose Theater, New York · July 12–16, 2005
Lawson performed in the 2005 Lincoln Center Festival revival of Ocean, the final work conceived by John Cage and Merce Cunningham together before Cage’s death. The dancers performed at the center of the room; the audience encircled them; and the musicians encircled the audience. He played in the orchestra performing Andrew Culver’s Ocean 1–95, alongside David Tudor’s electronic score, Soundings: Ocean Diary.
The work’s concentric design dissolved the conventional front of the stage. Sound arrived from around and behind the audience while dance unfolded independently at the center. Sitting inside that geometry—sound surrounding spectators surrounding movement—permanently expanded his sense of what music, space, and attention can do together.
Quotes:
“A gorgeous spectacle, conceptually complex yet sensuously gratifying.”
— The New York Times, quoted by Walker Art Center
“his most ambitious nature dance”
— Joan Acocella, The New Yorker
So Percussion with Merce Cunningham
Eliot Feld / Ballet Tech — A Stair Dance
Press & Documentation: Eliot Feld archive · Ballet Tech repertory · New York City Ballet repertory · Dance Informa press roundup · Wall Street Journal review
Solo Marimba
Ballet Tech / MANDANCE PROJECT · The Joyce Theater, New York · premiered October 21, 2004
For Eliot Feld’s A Stair Dance, Lawson performed the solo marimba part of Steve Reich’s Tokyo/Vermont Counterpoint live while five dancers moved through a rising architecture of stairs. Dedicated to tap legend Gregory Hines, the work combines the interlocking pulse of Reich’s counterpoint with athletic precision, wit, and a distinctly physical relationship between rhythm and choreography.
The ballet premiered with Ballet Tech’s MANDANCE PROJECT at The Joyce Theater in 2004 and returned across multiple seasons. It entered New York City Ballet’s repertory in 2006 and has since been staged by additional companies and student ensembles.
“dazzling … a must-see”
— Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, quoted by Dance Informa
“The entire cast displayed both remarkable concentration and playfulness.”
— Robert Greskovic, The Wall Street Journal
“Displaying great athleticism, the dancers run up and down the platforms…”
— New York City Ballet, repertory notes
Eliot Feld / New York City Ballet — Ugha Bugha
Press & Documentation: Eliot Feld archive — official credit · ExploreDance review · Dance Magazine — MANDANCE Project
Percussionist · Sō Percussion
World premiere: New York City Ballet · New York State Theater, Lincoln Center · April 29, 2006
For Ugha Bugha, a solo created by Eliot Feld for dancer Wu-Kang Chen, Lawson performed John Cage’s Third Construction live with Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Ryan Bishop of Sō Percussion. The score’s world of drums, rattles, tin cans, conch shell, and shifting rhythmic cycles met Feld’s kinetic solo choreography in one of the most physically immediate music-and-movement pairings he has performed.
The work premiered on an all-Feld program that opened New York City Ballet’s 2006 Diamond Project and later entered the repertory of Ballet Tech’s MANDANCE PROJECT at The Joyce Theater.
Quotes:
“The percussionists in the orchestra pit are remarkable.”
— Richard Penberthy, ExploreDance
Current Work
Lawson’s current work returns to dance from the composer’s chair: live and studio-based music made in dialogue with movement—voice, pedal steel, synthesizers, percussion, chamber instruments, and electronics shaped through composition and real-time improvisation.
He is developing interdisciplinary work for theaters, galleries, museums, film, and installation. He welcomes conversations with choreographers, dancers, companies, filmmakers, curators, and presenters about commissions, live performance, and collaboration.
Commission or collaborate: lawson@lawsonwhite.com