But Christopher Tignor, a young composer and performer shaped as much by his work in downtown nightclubs as by his formal education at Bard College and New York University, proves that it can be done.
Mr. Guo, a magnificent performer, shaped melodies with the expressive contours of vocal lines in Hua Yanjun's "Moon Reflected on the Er-Quan Spring" and provided flourishes that might give a violinist pause during Huang Haihuai's "Horse Racing".
When the melancholic main theme begins, first in the sighing strings, then in the ruminative piano, the performers shape it with expressive freedom reined in, to keep the phrasing clear.
Talk to me about your time at the legendary Pyramid Club -- how did this community of artists and performers shape and mold who you are today?
He redid dances and allowed performers to shape them individually.
The slow movements of both Haydn's Quartet in D (Op. 76, No. 5) and Beethoven's Quartet in E minor (Op. 59, No. 2) were finely polished, dark-hued readings, and the performers' thoughtfully shaped phrases were particularly eloquent in the Beethoven.
To hear the producer and recording engineer Tom Dowd describe his pioneering role in the evolution of studio recording, from monaural to stereo to multitracking to digital, is to begin to understand the degree to which machines, as much as performers, have shaped the changing sound of pop.
For his next production – currently known as Woody Allen Fall Project 2011 – the 75-year-old auteur has cast two of America's highest status young performers in the shape of Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page.
Collaboration is almost an obsession for Darkin – what her publicity material calls an "open-source hothouse approach to dance making" – meaning that the performers and collaborators shape the work as much as Darkin does.
In this way, Sheridan's identity as a performer is largely shaped and understood through his work as a global activist.
