Lori’s collaborations with dancers and choreographers include performance and class improvisation as well as many commissions to compose scores for major works. After accompanying dance classes periodically for more than 20 years, she’s found that translating a dancer’s motion takes both empathy and an innate ability that she describes as a loose wire. Dancers talk about how it’s tricky to hire a class accompanist. “It requires a bit of synesthesia,” Lori says, “like those people who can see colors in music or smell numbers.”