During this time he created lighting, objects, and effects for performance artists including John Jesurun ("Chang in a Void Moon"), Mikel Rouse ("Failing Kansas"), Roseanne Spradlin, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, and David Hykes.
Meanwhile, Rouse absorbed African rhythmic techniques from A. M. Jones's Studies in African Music, and studied Schillinger technique with Jerome Walman, one of the few "Certified" Schillinger Teachers in America; both influences came to inform his music.
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In 1995 he premiered a one-man "opera" Failing Kansas, based on the same story as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and in 2000 he produced an entire film with music by himself, rather pointedly titled Funding.
The Rouse Company | Mikel Rouse | Josh Rouse | Andy Rouse | W. W. Rouse Ball | Rouse | Richard Rouse III | Jacqueline Anne Rouse | W. H. D. Rouse | Rouse Properties | Rouse-Boughton baronets | Robbie Rouse | Mikel Urizarbarrena | Mikel Iglesias | Cecilia Rouse | Alfred Rouse |
Throughout the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, he worked as a leader (The Microscopic Septet, Big Trouble, Transparent Quartet) co-leader and sideman (Mikel Rouse, Kitty Brazelton, Bobby Radcliff), and began a parallel career in composition for film, theatre, dance and the concert hall.