Posts Tagged ‘dance’

Monday, November 14, 2011 ~ 5:30pm – 7:00pm

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Prince Street and West Houston)
New York, NY 10012

RSVP: http://dancersvoice.eventbrite.com/

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As a student in the Florida State University in NYC program, I was fortunate enough to be invited into Noémie LaFrance’s work studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to discuss her new project. Sitting in wooden chairs in the homey brick apartment, Noémie entered the room spewing information about her newest work, the White Box Project. In response to our questions, she explained that she is ever-interested in infusing dance with the everyday. The Black Box is known as a place to sit in an audience and to be spoonfed a presentation. Hence, the White Box.

Successfully, the White Box Project is the furthest thing from a proscenium, concert dance performance. As I entered the museum space, I was approached by what I thought to be a fellow observer, and naively pushed out the back door into the cement enclosed porch. The crowd chattered and looked around skeptically, until suddenly and miraculously the room fell totally silent (a brilliant tactic brought about by the performers, I realized on my second visit).  As the hour passed, it became clear that at least one of the men in the room was a performer. He, in my opinion, took on the role of the initiator; the leader. Otherwise, I was completely unsure as to who was a performer, and who was an observer. As a woman dressed in a trendy black coat and heels stood inches from my face and proceeded to lie down on the cement in front of me, I battled myself with whether I should do the same.

The feeling of uncertainty gradually melted away, as we were put into groups by a few men and women, and whispered instructions…“On the count of three, run!” By the end, I felt more like a child playing games in the schoolyard than an audience member.

Noémie invited everyone in attendance that Saturday back to another showing, free of charge, to witness the constant changes being applied to the project each day. I arrived the next week, eager to scrutinize the events I knew would happen and to identify the changes, of which there were several. This time, there was more dialogue between the dancers and the crowd; I was asked incognito to learn a succinct dance step, and teach it to another. Again, the realization that everyone was in clear groups/teams near the close of the work came with a playful sentiment. I was a participant, not a spectator. I cannot assume that this feeling fell upon every person in the ‘box’, but each individual surely brought something of their own to the experience, simply by entering the space.

The White Box is not a dance show. It is instead a mind game of sorts. Whether or not one chooses to run and turn the length of the walls at the demands of a scruffy man whose role is unknown is irrelevant. Choosing to act is participation. Choosing not to act, also, is participation. The audience ultimately, and blindly, has control of the show.

Carly Lozo is a dance major at Florida State University and an intern with Pentacle’s Movement Media this fall.

The traditional dance company model is exploding apart and a hybrid chimera is being born out of its ashes. These new dance companies are really production companies made up of interdisciplinary collaborators that do it all from making high end videos to performance pieces to working for fashion photographers, music artists, and ad agencies. But most of all this new dance company model lives and breathes on the internet through tweets, blogs, photo streams and video channels that keep an active community of fans, followers and audience members engaged and excited for more.

Here are two new dance companies based in Brooklyn that are at the cutting edge of this emerging paradigm.

DANCELEN(D)S is a non-profit production company that specializes in dance film. Artistic Director Jennifer Madison heads up a collective of artists to create movement-based films and documentaries as well as provide creative services for commercial productions.

“manoeuvres” by DANCELEN(D)S, featuring Valentine Norton’s Project Valentine Dance Crew

Indelible Dance Company calls itself “a dance company in HD.” Mysterious and bold, their website is simply a page of their videos and photos to date. What is so innovative is not the quantity of their output, but the quality of what they make. Each video and photo project is exquisitely wrought, finely composed and emits sexy, smart, classiness.

“Check Out My Leggings” by Indelible Dance

Each of these companies has embraced collaboration at the core of their creative process, and they go for the best collaborators they can find. Thus DANCELEN(D)S created a video look book for fashion designer Rachel Roy in which dancers move in clothing from her new collection, and Indelible Dance created an entire evening length performance around a design concept by Mary Huang to create sound-sensitive costumes made of light to portray the Big Bang Theory.

For the longest time, only a handful of dance companies embraced technology and collaboration in such a fundamental way. To do so required huge sums of money or technical wizardry make your own gear, such as Troika Ranch’s Isadora software that enabled dancers to trigger sound and video with their muscles. Today high-end photography and video is cheap to make and can be distributed all around the world for free on the internet. Fundraising sites such as Kickstarter allow artists to find and cultivate supporters beyond their personal networks and capture many microdonations to reach their large financial goals. New generations of dancers who grew up with these tools have entered the field and they are beginning to show us how dance will evolve in the 21st Century. What is most surprising about their revelations is that dance may be naturally dying off as a separate and distinguishable art form, instead it is merging with everything else into one interconnected web of creative life.

To learn about more artists and companies embracing this new model check out:

Dance-tech.net

Dance On Camera on Vimeo

Today’s video is from SALTS, a collaborative platform for Icelandic artist Ingi Jensson and German choreographer Heike Salze. strönd/strand is one of several site-specific dance films that were presented earlier this month as the installation project bekkur/bænk. I love this dance for its play with textures and detail–the grass and Saga Sigurðardóttir’s hair seem to do as much dancing as the dancers themselves.

Follow the rest of the project on http://www.salts.nl/

Movement Media is delighted to have Doug Fox as a guest blogger for this week’s posting.  Back in February 2009, Doug presented several movement-based animations as a guest curator for Movement Media’s Kinetic Cinema program.   Click here to read our blog posting featuring Doug’s Animation program at the screening.

Doug Fox’s Picks for Dance and Movement Animations

One of the captivating elements of dance and animation is the diverse range of forms it can take. Among the animation techniques that can be employed to represent the body in motion, whether in a more concrete or abstract manner, include:

• 2D
• 3D
• Stop motion
• Live-action and animation hybrids
• Real-time animated graphics using motion tracking
• Visualization overlays
• Special effects
• ASCII-based animations
• Digital puppetry
• Cut-out animation
• Motion-capture based
• 2D/3D lasers
• Rotoscoped
• Virtual worlds
• Pre-cinema era animations

For Doug’s round-up of some of his favorite dance and movement animations he made selections of each of these different types of animations.  A few videos chosen by Doug couldn’t be embedded onto our blog for your viewing convenience, but we encourage you to take a minute to check out these great videos, to learn about the many types of dance and movement-based animated videos artists are creating. Enjoy!

Rotoscoped Tango dance scene from “Waking Life”:

Gabrielle Lamb’s “Quizas” mixes 2D animation and live-action footage:

“En Tus Brazos” is a narrative-based 3D animation about a tragic accident that besets a famous Argentinean Tango dancer:

Also enjoy an ASCII-based animation “TextField” by Chirstinn Whyte and Jake Messenger:

http://www.jakemessenger.plus.com/textfield-h264.mov

The Converse music video “My Drive-Thru” is based on the cut-out animation technique:

Oren Lavie’s “Her Morning Elegance” is a stop-motion music video compiled from thousands of photographs:

The “Prodigy Warrior’s Dance” combines stop-motion animation and puppetry:

The Recoil Performance Group’s “Body Navigation” uses motion tracking and projectors to general real-time, interactive graphics in a performance environment:

“Trash Dance” features 3D animation and motion capture:

Lastly, Doug offers us “Anima Istanbul”, which re-creates the feeling of the pre-cinema era zoetrope effect:

http://motionographer.com/theater/if-2009-zoetrope/

Movement Media appreciates Doug sharing some of his favorite animated videodances with our readers.  As you can see, artists are making some extraordinary animations, and there will certainly be more exciting works in the future, as more artists are combine animation with dance and movement.

Doug Fox is the founder of Great Dance, one of the first dance blogs. His blog and speaking programs have primarily addressed how dance-makers can embrace the Internet and digital tools to enhance their marketing and promotional efforts. He is an active member of the dance community and serves on the Dance/NYC Advisory Board.

Doug began to study and research all forms of animation, especially as they relate to dance and movement. This research led to the creation of his dance animation educational program, which he was delighted to introduce at Movement Media’s Kinetic Cinema. Doug is continuing to expand this screening program and workshop and it will be shown on August 16th at the Hong Kong Science Museum presented by the City Contemporary Dance Company.

Doug can be reached at doug@greatdance.com and through his Great Dance website: http://greatdance.com. You can also follow his Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/dougfox.