Posts Tagged ‘intermedia performance’

I’m back, and ready to dive in with you and bring you up to date on this new project/piece/film/thing that i’ve been working on.  To give you a little context about the piece as a greater whole:

I’ve been working with my company, the A.O. Movement Collective, since the beginning of September on a new piece.  Through Dance Theater Workshop’s Van Lier Fellowship, i was awarded 100 hours of free rehearsal space at Topaz Arts in Queens (an awesome studio, if i may say so) which we’re just finishing up this month. We’ve been through a lot already – cast additions and subtractions (and additions and subtractions), improvising, brainstorming, making, editing, throwing out, remaking, renewing – the works. The piece in itself (and i’m going to talk about it broadly here, but you can find more on my blog) is comprised of many small sections (“spots of time”) that will eventually all be connected by a non-linear narrative.  Rather than working on a section at a time (which, we see very clearly now, would have been much easier to schedule and more economically viable) we’re making all of them at once, inch by inch and layer by layer.  Working on them in this way means that they all continue to inform the others and continue to grow.  I’ll be talking more about that process, and other Epic Work at my program at Chez Bushwick this Wed. night at 7 (come!!!) but that’s clear enough for now. All of this is to say: there are many sections (“13 variations on a car crash”, “Muerte Chiquita“, “fat fingers”, “Rock Solo”, “Slow lift evolving”, “eyes closed”, “gun to face”, etc) and this one is called “Glass Tree in Harlem”.

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Sarah A.O. Rosner with The A. O. Movement Collective

Hello there!

I’m Sarah A.O. – Anna has been kind enough to invite me to blog on Move the Frame on a regular basis. So, yes, i’m thrilled to be here!  I guess you could say i’m a dance blogger. You could also say that i’m a choreographer, and dancefilm-maker, as well as newmedia lover/developer.  You could also say that I am a lumberjack, but you, my friend, would be wrong on that last one.  My company, the A.O. Movement Collective, is a contemporary dance co. based in NY, in love with and dabbling in many things: the aesthetics of mess, epic work, new media programs, and dancefilm being some of them.  My blog, the Urgent Artist, is a digital space for some of those ideas and questions, as well as a space for anyone who “lives by their art” to throw down some good old fashioned knowledge, questions, or heartaches. I also work as a producer/editor for reels4artists, a video production company for the arts, and as an artist services intern at Dance Theater Workshop.   But enough about all that.

Since Anna approached me about writing for her blog, i’ve been thinking about how to structure my time and space here. Do i blog theory, or about performances and screenings, or maybe turn my attention to the economics of dancefilm versus performance? I find them all vast and interesting, but luckily there’s a fairly easy answer already in place.

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Button Happening by Naim June Paik

This Wednesday I will be co-hosting the first Artist Salon at Chez Bushwick with choreographer and media artist Jonah Bokaer about the influence of video art on live performance. Starting with Nam June Paik’s first known video, made in 1965 the day he bought the first Sony Portapak, from there we’ll focus on how performance artists have used video ever since. We’ll watch interview footage with the Wooster Group about their use of television and media content in their theatrical works, as well as interviews with Cathy Weis on her dance video processes.

Finally, we’d like to invite you, the audience to bring in work of your own that relates to video and live performance. What performance work is being done today that is in dialogue with new media? Can we distinguish the mediatized from the live anymore? What directions do you see inter-media performance heading in?

To share work, please email us a brief description of what you’d like to show, the total running time (no more than 10 min) and the format for screening. We can show DVD’s, minidv, or quicktime files.

ARTIST SALON

with Jonah Bokaer choreographer and media artist & Anna Brady Nuse choreographer and dance film-maker

Wednesday Jan 28th 7:00-9:00pm $5

Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206
Trains: L to Morgan Street, exit back of the train. Turn LEFT outside the station. Turn LEFT onto Boerum Street

Electric Haiku by Cathy Weis

Club Midnight: Spirit into Flesh

Amy Greenfield is an award-winning film-maker and cinedance pioneer. In her latest project, CLUB MIDNIGHT: FLESH INTO LIGHT she combines her films about erotic dancers with Leonard Nimoy’s  photography about the divine female presence and re-imagines it all for the stage with a cast of live dancers (featuring Andrea Beeman as the Enchantress of Bioluminosity, Bessie Award-winning dancer Tasha Taylor & Vittoria Maniglio). The result is a true multi-media feast for the senses.

If that isn’t enough to intrigue you, the music features John Zorn’s Masada, words are spoken by Emmy Award-winning actress, Maeve Kinkead, and Lyda Borelli is seen in a 1917 Italian Diva film.

I’m particularly excited to see how Amy, a master of the film image, is able to work with live dance and combine theatricality with the screen. The show has been specially designed for the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, which is intimate and cabaret-ish, but also allows her to project real 35mm film on a full screen. It’s rare to see a work of such  uncompromised vision. After my disappointment last year in Isaac Julien’s “Cast No Shadow” with Russell Maliphant at BAM, I’m hoping that Greenfield’s “Club Midnight: Flesh Into Light” will have a strong choreographic presence and the dancers will not be completely consumed by the seductive screens.

Still from Club Midnight

CLUB MIDNIGHT: FLESH INTO LIGHT
January 30 and 31, 7:30 and 9:30 Nightly
Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th Street, NYC

Reservations: 212-864-5400 or www.symphonyspace.org

More info: www.clubmidnight.net
www.cinemabody.wordpress.com

This week I was struck by two interesting initiatives for web audiences by NYC dance artists.

First, on Sunday December 14th at 8pm EST, Misnomer Dance Theater will have a live webcast of the final NYC performance of their premiere piece, Being Together choreographed by Chris Elam. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can tune in by going to their website: http://www.misnomer.org/live. In addition, online audiences can ask questions and interact during the show through a live moderated chat. According to their press, this is the first ever live webcast of a downtown dance show, and it could greatly expand the potential of the audience/choreographer relationship. I think it will be interesting to see if the webcam footage will be compelling enough to sit through a whole performance. As anyone who has watched a video of a dance show knows, the seeing the video is generally pretty inferior to sitting in the theater and viewing show live. The inclusion of live chat may make a big difference though, because you can “talk” during the performance and the interaction among the audience members may make the web-viewing experience more interesting. This is an experiment, and I look forward to seeing how it works out. Unfortunately I can only go to the Sunday show in person, so I won’t be able to observe the live online webcast. Hopefully there will be extensive follow-up on the Misnomer blog.

The second initiative worth noting is a new duet by Yanira Castro that is being choreographed, in part, on Twitter. The piece entitled Dark Horse/Black Forest is a private performance that can booked for a limited time through PS 122. According to the PS122 e-newletter, the piece is an “intensely performed love story in the most intimate of spaces: your bathroom.” This alone is pretty interesting, especially when ponders a dance piece taking place in your NYC apartment bathroom that is so small you can barely sit on the toilet… But the other interesting twist is how they are marketing the shows. Yanira Castro & Company has created two profiles on Twitter for the two characters in the show, written by Rozalia Jovanic, and their feeds are a blow by blow account of what each character is thinking with each move they make and word they say. The result is a disembodied conversation, part inner monologues, part dance duet, part reality. As those of you who Twitter know, you can only write comments of up to 140 characters on your feed, so the descriptions are short, pithy, and intense. Here is a sample of their two Twitter feeds

	doghebitedme She prevents my hand opening the door. Let me see your neck, I say and remove her scarf. I fill her mouth with my tongue muscle. 12:58 PM Dec 10th from web
	doghebitedme She comes into the bathroom where I am and shuts the door. I can see her in the mirror. I piss. She puts on lipstick. More, she says, More. 12:42 PM Dec 10th from web
	doghebitedme ‘Smolensk, Suzdal, Vitsebsk, Tver,’ I say. Those are words. A word is a container, empty or full, or half-full or clouded or spluttering 12:37 PM Dec 10th from web
	darkbloom8 His eyebrows lifted as in ‘knowing something.’ I follow him down the hall. His foot drags behind. ‘You don’t tell me anything,’ I say. 12:17 PM Dec 10th from web
	darkbloom8 What is popular is useful, a tool to jerk something with, ‘What do you mean?’ I say. ‘Your words?’ I realize how little know him. 12:13 PM Dec 10th from web

If you want to follow the piece on Twitter, here’s how:

1. Twitter is a free service and is easy to join. Go to Twitter.com and sign up.
2. Click on each of the following two links, and from their profile pages click the “follow” button:
   twitter.com/doghebitme
   twitter.com/darkbloom8
   You will now be able to follow their conversations from your home page on Twitter.

To be even more immersed: receive tweets on the go and instantaneously by connecting your cell phone to Twitter. (Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this, but be sure to know what your text plan looks like with your wireless carrier.)

1. Go to Settings. Go to Devices. Add your cell phone number.
2. You will be given a number to text to activate your phone.3. Then go to Profile. Click on “following” above Updates. Turn the device updates on for doghebitedme and darkbloom8.

For more information on how to book the show for your bathroom, email darkhorse@ps122.org for reservations and more information.

Post Script

Here is a follow-up post by Maria from A Time To Dance blog about her experience watching Misnomer’s show on UStream.

….and here is a link to Misnomer’s video archive of the stream: http://www.misnomer.org/live/archive.