When we engage in Tuning, we open our creative perception to multiple senses, allowing movement, drawing, and visual inquiry to emerge together.
Integrating mark-making and amplified image practices has expanded the possibilities of composition.
Through the Tuning Traces ensemble, these explorations culminate in a collaborative performance that demonstrates the collective power and meaning-making of the practice.
ABOUT TUNING TRACES MADBROOK
What is Tuning?
Tuning Scores are sense-based compositional exercises developed by Lisa Nelson.
Tuning Scores reveal the elements of composition through immediate feedback. As participants observe and respond to one another’s movements with verbal cues like “pause,” “repeat,” and “replace,” the work unfolds collectively.
The Tuning Traces project integrates movement and drawing into a public performance that demonstrates the possibilities of Tuning as an interdisciplinary, experimental practice.
Past Tuning Projects
Over years of collaborative practice, projects such as Tuning4Armageddon and Tuning Traces have brought together multi-racial, intergenerational artists, integrating movement, drawing, improvisation, and visual inquiry into collective, experimental performance.
This ongoing practice contributes to the cultural legacy of Tuning Scores while culminating in audience-facing presentations.
Our 2026 Performance
In April 2026, Bay Area BIPOC Tuning artists will gather in Madbrook, Vermont with Lisa Nelson and margit Galanter to refine their practice of Tuning Scores.
This gathering culminates in a public performance on April 9, 2026, presenting the integration of movement, drawing, and visual composition.
The artists will explore the relationships between aesthetics, movement, and visual practice, demonstrating how improvisational composition can be fully realized as a performable work.
This performance also honors the guidance and inspiration of past collaborators, including Jubilee July, Kevin C. Lo, Ainsley Tharp, Frances Rosario, and James-Amutabi Connie Haines.
CALL FOR SUPPORT
As we take a leap into our imaginative flourishing, we are asking for your support
This is a grassroots project organized outside of institutional structures, made possible through Lisa Nelson’s generous invitation.
The total budget is $4,936, covering travel, per diem, artist honoraria, and materials for documenting the performance and contributing to the Tuning archive.
We have already secured $2,847 in community contributions and are requesting $2,089 in emergency funding to ensure the April 9th public performance can proceed.
We look forward to deepening this inquiry into our imaginative flourishing and would love your support to help make it happen. Please consider supporting our performance and ongoing work today!
Help Us Meet Our Goal
Donate Today
Thank you for supporting the April 9th public performance of Tuning Traces.
Contributions will directly support essential project expenses, including:
Travel and transportation
Per diem during preparation and performance
Artist honoraria
Materials and documentation for the Tuning archive
Choose the friends and family option.
Please make note of "tuning traces" in comments.
You can follow the link here or find @Margit-Galanter.
Please make note of "tuning traces" in comments.
For bank transfer or Wise please email margit to set up the transfer, and please cover the transfer fee.
COMMUNITY IMPACT
Our performance April 9th, 2026 in Madbrook, VT expands the cultural and artistic legacy of Tuning Scores by demonstrating how movement, perception, and visual practice co-emerge in a completed, public-facing work. Audience members will witness the unfolding of improvisational composition, offering insight into collective artistic inquiry.
The project also strengthens a network of BIPOC artists in experimental performance, supporting teaching, collaboration, and continued creative exchange beyond the residency.
WHO WE ARE
margit galanter is a dance poet and cultural instigator whose work is offered through the live art school the vivid grove. They have been tuning since encountering the practices in Seattle with karen nelson & Scott Smith in 1996. margit tunes with folks all around; in artistic dialogue, as support for dramaturgy, facilitation, and creative evolution.
Zoe is a mark maker, painter, mover/performer, hand poke tattoo artist and creative dance teacher of kids. Tuning teaches Zoe about the practice of taking time, slowing down, and really seeing. This project is an opportunity to deepen their research into how drawing and movement breath together.
Zoe is working on a series of TUNING FLASH for tattoo fundraising. You can see more of Zoe's tattoo work below!
I'm Bay (Bahía) -- SF Bay Area born and raised mixed black creative. Tuning has changed how I imagine and move in all areas of my creative life. It is a dream of an opportunity to perform Tuning Traces this April. I want to deepen my exploration of Tuning, tracing, and be able to share this art with my communities around the world.
I will be hosting a series of INNER NATURE DRAWING classes to help raise funds for our performance.
Find out more information below if you'd like to join in the creative flow!
I'm Rose (they/she). Third generation chinese-american multidisciplincary artist living on occupied lisjan ohlone land.
Taking a tuning workshop with Lisa in 2018 informed my artistic practice and improvisational tendencies in ways I am still unearthing.
Tuning invites me into a deep state of presence and curiosity - it unravels patterns, disorients, brings joy forward.
I am eager to deep dive into tuning with this amazing group of people and revel in what emerges!
Join Our Offerings
Tune In for More
In preparation for the April 9th performance, we are sharing a series of creative practices that inform our work with Tuning Scores.
These practices reveal how movement, drawing, and visual composition interact in the ensemble’s experimental work.
TATTOO FLASH
Stay tuned on Zoe's upcoming TATTOO FLASH they will be doing to raise funds for our 2026 Tuning performance. You can see more of Zoe's incredible tattoo work and book your session here:
INNER NATURE DRAWING CLASS
Join Bay's INNER NATURE DRAWING Series and dive back into your creative practice.
This class is for EVERYONE, especially those who feel they can't draw, want to get back into a gentle creative practice, are looking to create in a community container, and are ready to nurture space for their inner creativity to grow.
Let your inner nature flourish!
More on Tuning Scores
A growing archive of writing and artistic exploration documents the practice of Tuning Scores. These resources provide context for the lineage and methodology behind Tuning Traces and the upcoming public performance.
Read more on Tuning Scores from margit galanter
Explore margit's thesis chapter and take a deep into the world of Tuning.
The Science of Tuning
This editorial outlines the outcome of an interdisciplinary session on collective sense-making through dance improvisation revealing the nature of cognitive and creative behaviors.
Thank you for supporting TUNING TRACES MADBROOK 2026 Performance!
In solidarity,
margit, zoe, rose, bay
