Posts Tagged ‘intermedia performance’

by Dawn Paap

The world is responding to dance more than ever, as individuals from across the globe share their love of dance publicly and through video arts.

We are finding more and more people documenting their celebrations of dance icons through dance and video, and their dances continue to resonate with Internet viewers looking to connect artistically, locally, and universally to create MORE dance.

This new social movement through dance is liberating and profound.  World records are being broken as more and more people come together to dance for a common goal–the celebration of dance.  The growing numbers speak volumes, and as we continue to learn from dance, we will continue to grow to our full potential as artists and communities.  At the end of this posting you can learn how to get involved in this new social movement and dance phenomenon and help Thrill The World by dancing with the WORLD to Michael Jackson!

Dance legends have impacted me greatly, as I see them teaching us how to connect with ourselves, others, and the world.   This week we pay tribute to Michael Jackson who continues to affect the world as seen through the arts.  Dancers and media artists have been making documented tributes to his legacy.

Michael Jackson-the King of Pop

Michael Jackson is remembered fondly for his impact on dance.  Out of the hundreds of videodances recently created to celebrate the beloved Michael Jackson, these are some of my favorites.

As a dancer, this next videodance speaks to Michael Jackson, the man who made me want to dance freestyle and hip hop every day.

Video artists have also done their part to pay tribute to Michael, as seen in this adorable video to the song ”Don’t stop til you get enough“…

Michael Jackson dance tributes continue to hit the street, as seen in this videodance tribute to Beat It done in Stockholm.

In addition to these popular songs and dance moves, there are continuous dance tributes to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  Never before has there been more ZOMBIE walks and events, as demonstrated by the zombie networking website http://www.ThrillTheWorld.com.  ‘Thrill The World’ has organized 72 dance tribute events, breaking a world record last year with 4,179 dancers participating from 10 different nations.  They are hoping to reach their goal of 270,00 people to dance to Thriller in 2009 and pay tribute to Jackson’s life and dance. Thrill 2009 looks to be a big year for zombies doing the crawl of the dead!

This videodance tribute from 2008 showcases the individuals who came  together as dancing zombies to celebrate Michael Jackson’s influence on the world.

Anyone can learn the dance moves to Thriller, and participate in Thrill The World 2009.  There are various videos available online, such as this one.

In addition to thousands of people who are learning dance moves from online video, more and more people are learning Michael Jackson’s dance moves in dance studios around the world.  Leaders in the Hip Hop genre are doing their part to perform and teach Michael Jackson’s moves to current and future generations of dancers.  The following videodance tribute features Hip Hop Masters Lil’ Mama, Taeko, Feng, and The Beat Freaks.

The King of Pop was one inspirational gentleman, and will be remembered on a global scale…as evidenced by the videodances shared in this posting and the hundreds available on the Internet.  I look forward to continued celebrations of Michael Jackson through dance…so whenever you can, by yourself, with a partner, or with a group–get out there and dance!

Tune in next week for more posts in tribute to Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham.

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
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