For reshearsal this satruday...

Split Screen Improv

Intern Kate's first day // a primer in the aesthetics of mess

Today was Kate's first day in the office (ie: my bedroom + desk) working with me! She's totally awesome and efficient, but this isn't news - she danced for me back in 2008 in "D()!L@rS !N tHe B@nK!", so i know she's legit from way back. She offered to do some admin work for the us, and i quickly took her up on her offer - BAMN! that's how it happens!

Anyway. Today i got her started on two of our MegaTasks for the summer: revitalizing the AOMC's facebook presence (ie: making our group into a "page", which is how you're supposed to do it now...adding video, making new "friends", etc) and getting old performances and dancefilms up on vimeo. Have i mentioned how awesome this girl is? She got SO MUCH DONE!

Check it out - they're still both works in process, but we'd love for you to
///Become a FAN!/// of the Collective's facebook page (Urgent Artist facebook page to come soon!) and ///Check out our VIMEO page!///
to see some awesome vintage AOMC stuff. It's far from polished (as it's stuff from the past time and not the now time or the future time) but it's fun to see all we've done in the past three years!

One of the things that getting all this stuff out of archive has made me think about is how my interests as an artist have evolved over the past few years and, more specifically, where those interests first started and where they're headed.

One of the most obvious to me, is the emergence of a fixation with "the aesthetics of mess". Mess is quickly becoming a part of our branding (take our new slogan: "Anti-Ephemeral PoMo Humanism //ie: hot mess.//") and a bigger part of what's important to me aesthetically. Where did it come from? As far as i can tell, i've always been a little fixated. I can remember preferencing imperfection to clarity for much of my childhood and teenage years (okay, maybe it was an angsty thing) and aesthetically, i can remember being attracted to images and displays of mess in art galleries and movies. In terms of my own work, however, it's a little less clear. Where does a fixation like that come from? What is the second that a fixation clicks into existence and begins to grow? Before i go off on a tangent about my fixation with the origin of fixations, let's get back on track: the aesthetics of mess.

During my junior year at Sarah Lawrence College I took my first real film class, and our first assignment was to take a work we had already done and re-make the same idea or theme using a different layout or series of images. I took this piece that i had made the year before:



which was in turn made off of a stage piece called "Five on Love and Lack Thereof" and re-did it in a bathroom setting. This is what the final result (my first time editing on final cut) looked like:



While i didn't find it hugely successful (at the then time or in the now time) for a few reasons (mainly lack of experience), it did spark a few things in me. The main sparkage, of course being mess. But what kind of mess? I'm a structuralist at heart, so even mess is organized in the way i think about it.

What kind indeed. White mess, lots of white mess. Specifically: an aesthetic attraction to large quantities of white pedestrian items used in ways that generate a large amount of mess, disorder, etc. SO. When it came time for our final products at the end of the film class, i knew what i wanted.

It's much simpler to connect the dots in hindsight (i wasn't aware at the time) but the White Arias Project is a clear descendant of this original film. Made of two separate films (although there was a third milk-based film in the works) "Eggshells" and "Flour" both hold a special place in my heart. I can't show you Eggshells, much as i'd like to, at the request of the semi-nude dancers who performed it, but here's Flour:



So. Clear, right? In hindsight. But!
Looking towards the future time:




Do you see where it's going!?!
It's so nice to discover a context to give oneself mid-process, and so exciting to imagine adding a new voice to the mess-dialogue happening between my works!

Which is all of course to say: Kate is an AWESOME intern for posting all of this so i can share it with you! Look for a post from her soon!

"i bloom so lonely"

Yes folks, it's semi-official.
What once was "Glass Tree" is getting over-hauled and re-worked and will now be (the/ilona's/a) "Bloomcycle".

Why?
For starters, "glass tree" was an idea and image that was, to me, very specific to Julia. Since she's no longer dancing it, I needed to mentally shift it before a choreographic re-envisioning could be made. This is, you'll remember, the section that once was Julia dancing 30 short phrases with a plastic bag (cut off by her injury), which was genesis for the SIDEsubTEN project (cut off by inexperienced planning on my part). With all that bad karma (silly as it sounds, it really starts to weigh you down if you don't address it) I felt a need to re-examine and redefine it if we were going to keep it in the piece.

Not that this is a bad instinct for any section - we've been doing it organically for all the sections, and this one just got dusty because we left it under the bed for so long. So yes - time to redefine.

For starters, i want to give it more of a contrast between the lightness (almost unapparent in the first version) and more breadth spatially. I'm also playing with ideas about involving the whole group into it (either as to-be-thrown-bag suppliers or as movers) and really focusing on what it means that it's the last "spot of time" that She attempts to show Him, and how it can or can't function as the end of the piece or transition to that end. Also, with Ilona dancing it (for now) and Ilona being Her (for now), there are certainly questions bubbling up about how that changes both it's positioning within the piece, and the movement itself. So that's a lot.

Why "bloomcycle"?
Well...i was looking through an old notebook trying to figure out what to do with the material we'd made, looking for things we'd moved on from or forgotten, and i came across this:

"Bloomcycles" and further down the page "i bloom so lonely"

both of those kind of stuck with me, despite the fact that i have NO recollection of why i wrote them down, though i can recall the rehearsal, place i was sitting, and people who were there. I think it fits with what that section is aiming for - She (and bear with me, becuase this is new, as of Ilona being cast as Her) is finally exploding, or blooming, or wilting, or even just saying something, even if it's just a whisper. She's finally using her own voice, rather than speaking through these other metaphors, and it's directly about her state - the conflict of feeling okay, feeling progress, feeling some semblance of power, and then also being continually undercut, getting more and more frustrated, feeling less and less progress. So the idea that blooming could be lonely, that fits. And the idea of it being a cycle points to the possibility of involving other dancers, and the notion that becuase of the undercutting, her evolution is cyclical. And then of course there's Leopold Bloom, and he fits with everything.

Maybe i'm christening this a bloomcycle to see where he leads it - he's always taking me somewhere interesting.

Slow Mo PoMo Promo!

With apologies to Neil Greenberg for the title, check out the promo i just finished for 13V!


13 Variations on a Car Crash Promo from Sarah A.O. Rosner on Vimeo.

I've had my nose to the grindstone for the past week or so on this EMPAC application, and this weekend I had that great moment in the app-writing process when all the painstaking explaining and delicate rewording gave way to an "oh" moment. As much as grant writing and apps can be tedious and a huge energy drain, I almost always come away from them clearer on the piece i'm submitting.

I though i'd share some of what I wrote in the treatment for the film version of 13v:

Picture a head-on car crash in exquisite slow motion:

As one car hits the other, the sheet metal hoods ripple, snap, buckle, and condense—forcing themselves into the windshield, which holds and holds, suddenly crystallizing into shatter of broken glass. Crumple zones spent, the real weight of the cars grind over each other and the symmetrical ballet begins, the ends of both cars lofting in the air and rotating before sucking themselves back to the pavement with such weighty heft that even in slow motion you sense their heaviness in your whole body. As the cars compress and fracture, an array of scrap metals detach and spiral outwards. Glass bounces glittering and metal shrieks twisting, as the cars lurch to a stop.

Point is, you can’t look away.

I propose the creation of a new dancefilm entitled “13 variations on a car crash”—a piece that blends the heavy partnering and detailed gesture of my dance work with the aesthetics of a car crash—edited like an action movie and told as a love story.

I am admittedly obsessed with the aesthetics of car crashes. Perhaps this is not so surprising: as present-day humans we are constantly viewing car crashes (on the highway, on the news, in action movies, etc) knowing we shouldn’t be attracted to them and yet not being able to look away. I feel a kinship, especially as a mover, with these hulks of gravitational metal. There is no falseness in a car crash—only the weight and the speed of the cars involved and their resulting physics. Their heaviness is brutish, their interaction is defined as ‘wreckage.’ These qualities embody my type of dance: hard falls, striking images, and brutally honest physicality.

The film.
The film itself follows two once-lovers (the two main dancers) as they experience a series of physical and emotional crashes. Entering into a dream-like collage of effortless yet heavy partnering, hard falls, surreal images, and grocery lists, the pair is pulled through space and time, navigating a visually stunning junkyard in the black of night. Amidst crushed cars and blaring TV sets, dark Muses direct the action and embody the physics of wreckage. Crashes disrupt time and render each moment infinite. As heads sail towards dashboards there’s still time to think “coffee…eggs…flour…facewash…” Exploring the emotional damage of lovers becoming once-lovers, the film’s fixation with crashes is an embodiment of physical and emotional hurt, an exposure of the beauty of debris. As the dancers struggle to find control in the face of inertia, the film’s editing and slow motion mimics ideas of control and lack thereof, horrible beauty, and the mess of how we treat the ones we love.

Point is, you can’t look away.

Shooting the film.
I propose to create the film via three main shoots.
The first shoot (which we will choreograph in early September 2010 and shoot later that month) involves the two main dancers, and consists of intimate shots of the two lovers together – approaching for a kiss, unexpected shots of the soft “crash” of the two bodies coming together, etc. This footage will be edited together in late September with found footage of actual crashes, crash tests, and driver safety videos to create a montage of crashes, both mechanical and sexual. After being edited and printed to VHS, this montage will be played through the cluster of old TVs that will serve as the lover’s “car” in the second shoot. I am excited to create this film-within-a-film because it will lines the dancers, counterpoint their movements, or re-contextualize what they are doing. Since the new footage of the dancers will be mixed with low-fi found footage, I will be shooting it on my own equipment (a Panasonic 100dvx)—and will therefore be able to save on production costs by requiring only minimal lighting and one camera operator on this shoot.

After completely reworking and rehearsing the movement for the piece for the month of October, the second and third location shoots will occur over a weekend in early November, using the first two nights to shoot in a junkyard and the third to shoot in a black box theater.

The second (and main) shoot will take place in a crushed car lot in Brooklyn. This set of crushed cars and scrap metal, along with the eight TV sets showing the crash montage, will serve the piece by providing a location that is at once surreal and pedestrian, enhancing the piece’s sense of unease and impending impact. Lighting designed by Lauren Parrish will utilize the location by shooting with the available industrial light, as well as hotwiring select headlights of junked cars to frame the piece. This location will feature the majority of the movement of the piece, and will be shot in a variety of stationary and moving shots. It is important to me that dance on screen still convey visceral excitement and impulses to the audience, so we will shoot both a well-planned storyboard, and leave time for improvisational shots of the movement as to allow for maximum flexibility in editing.

The third and final shoot will be in a black box theater. This shoot will capture two types of footage: surreal images of the two main dancers and lighting-specific images of the Muses. The surreal snippets include shots of the main dancers playing with a small matchbox car, the woman putting it in her mouth and running it over her legs. Lighting-specific shots of the Muses’ movement will utilize the black box setup to create a night-driving atmosphere, playing with the effect of the dancers moving in darkness while “headlights” sweep over them, illuminating them in glimpses.

Starting in December, I will begin editing the footage from these shoots together to create a cohesive and alluring whole. Because I work day jobs in addition to my art making, I plan for the project to be fully edited by the end of March. After the film’s premiere in August 2010 at EMPAC, I plan on submitting the film to a number of film festivals (dancefilm and otherwise) as well as using screenings and DVD sales of the project to fundraise and build excitement for the eventual production of other sections in the larger piece.

In terms of production, this piece will be fortified by the collaborations and working relationships that will create it. As I work as an editor and producer at reels4artists, Gerrit Vooren (owner, producer) and Brian Miller (production coordinator, camera operator) are excited to bring their expertise to the film. Additionally, Lauren Parrish (lighting design and execution) has lit many of my stage works. New collaborations include Tracy Klein, (costume design and execution) who is interested in creating a movable and pedestrian subtle-grunge look, and the Psychedelic Disco Angels (composers), who are committed to a collaborative approach to making a lush dark sound-score specifically for the film.

As always, feedback (as E.D. would say: questions? headaches? heartaches?) is welcome, as are questions about the meaning of life, and great summer salad recipes. I'll post the whole app once i'm done so you can cross your fingers with me. Here's to the imminent maybe of our funding, the eventual certain of our success, and the rare joys of clarity!

Finally! source for SIDEsubTEN is online...

It's about time!

If you're new to the blog or project (welcome!) SIDEsubTEN is an offshoot of the A.O. Movement Collective's new work. The idea is that we take the source material (32 + 2 phrases) of one of the sections (a solo called "glass tree") and give it to ten other artists. We then go our separate ways, and each make an original piece out of the material, joining back up in July to present the eleven works as a show at Chez Bushwick's CAKE series.

Ups, downs, and direction changes abounding (Julia, my dancer for the solo, is nursing a neck injury right now and not able to dance) the project has gotten off to a slow start, but i'm excited all the same.

This is a video of me doing the phrases (so we could get it online to show the non-NY collaborators). It's definitely lacks the sublty and visceral knowladge of the movement as well as sharp beauty that julia brings to it - a few of the phrases i hadn't ever done before this shoot - but it's at least a record. Enjoy!


Glass Tree Phrases for SIDEsubTEN from Sarah A.O. Rosner on Vimeo.

crash crash crash

Here's some new footage from the "sexytime" crash (crash #7 of 13) from 13 variations on a car crash. This was the first day of cristina and cory working on it together (they'd both learned it separately with other partners) so we still have a lot of little details to iron out. It's getting there!

A few of my favorite things...

As you (may) know, we'll be showing the first excerpt of this epic mass of stuff that we've been working on very very soon! Sunday April 12th to be precise, as part of danceNOW NYC's RAW showings. Car crashes have been sort of a fixation for me for a while now. Not the bloody, sudden, real ones, but the gorgeous, slow motion, sparkling ones.

I've been talking with Cory and Cristina (the "driver/passenger" for the piece...but abstract)about why i'm so fixated on them, and i think it's a few things.

1. Something about the sudden wreckage of a crash - that it's such a break from the way things normally are, to see sheet metal and glass and all those "strong" and "structural" elements ripped apart like that - keeps taking me back to feelings i had after the end of a certain relationship i emerged from about a year ago. How cliche, i know. But it certainly fits the piece, in that the slow motion study of these images is an attempt to enact or retain some sort of logic or control over something that a) has no control b) is governed by logic, but very unchangeable logic ie. physics and c) can't be undone even if you understand it. The piece itself (as a whole) aims to explore that space of visiting and revisiting - the search to find logic or clarity in something that is much more massive and out of control than yourself.

2. Something about how in slow motion you can isolate the moment when all the howevermany tons of car is completely in the air - it's almost like a lullaby.

3. The physics that make all car crashes pretty much the same. Inside of one, it must feel like the least organized, most instantaneous...crunch and thrash? There aren't really words for it. But looked at objectively from the outside it's pretty self explanatory. If the car is hit at this place at this speed, it will react in this way.

4. There's this whole sub-culture relating car crashes and sex. Recently watched the 199(6?) film Crash (no, not the race relations one) and didn't love it as a film (thought it lacked a lot of basic construction) but thought it was really interesting as a study. Also, Palahaniuk's Book "Rant" rocked my world this past summer, and i'll probably come around for another read sometime soon. When Adrienne was at rehearsal, she noticed a lot of the sexiness in the crashes that we had constructed so far, which surprised me as it hadn't been our focus. Since then we've made crash #7 - "sexytime". You'd like to see a clip of that one, wouldn't you? Well you can't. Not yet.

But enough po-mo mumble jumble, here's what i wanted to share with you: some of the best crashes i've found. It's worth watching till it gets to the slow-mo part, trust me!





And there's also this one, which won't embed, but is pretty cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZQMfb5naz8

Then of course there's the art of the cinematic car crash, for which the second matrix (in my humble opinion) takes the cake:



Yum.

Oh Dear: a thumpy lullabye from the inside of my head.

Factors:

1. I have been campaigning for the last week against my highschool's decision to cut the non-elective middle school dance program. Have also been working all week to be able to clear my schedule so that i can get to the meeting they'll be having about it friday morning in DC. Leave NY thurs at 9:30, DC for meeting 8-9am Fri, back in NY by Fri at 12? Not going to work. Having to choose between making art and engaging in arts advocacy is depressing. Knowing that no matter what you do or say, some people will never value you or the work you do is worse.

2. Too much snow, too much cold. Listening to lovely little lullaby's all day, in love with repetition.

3. Richert may have something to do with it.

4. Snow day today because it was raining on my computer at work through the ceiling. No joke. Nice to have some time for scheduling, blogging, and roomate-cuddling-tv-watching-time.

My this is personal.

Result: this little silly baby.

Slow Lift Evolving

Here's some rehearsal footage from the week before last, it's Caity and Cristina's "Slow Lift Evolving". We've been working on it on and off for over a month. Originally it was going to be for Carlos and Caity, but i've become quite attached to it in this pairing.

It was originally constructed to be a slow dance/slow lift sequence - it's something i've been trying to catch ever since i made one for Levon and Ariel in a comp class in college, and lacked the foresight to get it on film. Lost forever, how sad. This isn't the same thing at all, but some of the lovely parts are still there and still my favorites, specifically when the climbing gets effortful.

Lillie and Cory have also learned the sequence, but not to do with each other. The original idea was to have it be Carlos and Caity, which quickly morphed into the idea of having it be Carlos/Caity, Lillie/Julia, and Cristina/Cory. The dynamic would change a lot were it male and female, yes?

Still deciding how it will be...i'll let you know when i get it figured out...

13 variations on a Car Crash

Here's some initial work that we're doing on the spot we're calling "13 variations on a Car Crash".

I've been a little hesitant about showing it until we're a little farther along, in part because of similar reasons to Lillie's rock solo. I think dance like this is dangerous (or, at least, it feels dangerous for me as the choreographer to be pursuing it), becuase it gets so close to acting and miming. As i said at CB on wed, i have no interest in acting out a car crash (or 13 of them) - instead i'm trying to cultivate a non-human ability into the body and anatomically explore trauma via the tool slow motion. Which is all said and good in my head of PoMo reasoning, but makes very little difference for someone who's just watching it.

That being said, all the feedback i've gotten on it is incredibly positive and excited. I'm really looking forward to working with cristina and cory more on this - really refining it and getting it right on the mark. I'm also excited to incorporate more of the cast, as we're expanding it from a duet to more of a group thing, though the focus will remain on cory and cristina's action.

Anyway, here it is, and would love to hear anything that comes up for you watching it.
We'll be premiering it as a work in process as part of the RAW showings at one of the NYU Studios on April 12th @ 11. Mark your calendar! Save the date! And always wear your seatbelt.

Very Very Cute.

Like the title says, cute city.
Reminds me of all the Busby Berkly talk that was going on during the Dance on Camera Festival. Can't embed, but check it (and his other work too!) here.

Dancefilm - points for a fresh concept

So. Success so far at keeping the blogging going while adding another job to my life: not so hot.

But! (fear not, gentle reader and all that jazz) I'm getting my camera back today, and will be able to post some rehearsal footage soon, which gives me the same feeling as this too-good-to-be-true spring we're experiencing in NY. Also, i'm developing strategies for coping. For instance, posting some great dancefilm from time to time that i think is interesting.

Take this one, for example. 

I came across it on dance-tech, and thought that it was a pretty fresh concept and well-edited to boot, even if it gets a little too effecty (in my opinion) by the end.  I like how the film takes the liberty to utilize multiple sets and modes of "story telling" What do you think? 

Kinetic Cinema with Doug Fox @ Chez Bushwick

So i know you don't have plans for next Wednesday yet (not because you're not cool, but just because it's Wednesday, and it's still a week away) so allow me to suggest a fun after school activity: Doug Fox's go at Kinetic Cinema at Chez Bushwick.

If you're not yet hip to the Kinetic Cinema series (or even if you are), i highly suggest you come check it out. The program, designed and curated by Anna Brady Nuse (director of Movement Media at Pentacle, "Move the Frame" blog creator, and a dancefilm maker herself) is described as "the intersection of dance and the moving image". Every third Wednesday, she invites someone new to put together a program of dancefilms and other media that have inspired them. One of the things that i love about this series is the acknowladgement that talking about dancefilm naturally involves talking about film that isn't dance, dances that aren't on screen, and all types of media that falls somewhere in between. The result is programs that are as diverse as the are interesting - and every month it's a whole new perspective.

This month, Doug Fox (creator of Great Dance) is going to present a bunch of dance-related animations. Here's part of the press release:

The program will feature over fifteen clips from video and film animations, theatrical movie releases, TV commercials, music videos, performances and installations, and student projects. Among the highlighted animation techniques will include hand-drawn 2D animation, 3D animation, live-action and computer graphics, stop-motion, rotoscoping, motion graphics, real-time performance animation, machinima and other animation styles.

This program builds on Fox's online guide to "50 Dance and Movement Animations," which he published in January 2009 on Great Dance. He has interviewed many of the artists, animators, directors, choreographers and dancers who participated in the production of the videos which will be screened and he will share insights from these conversations during the Q & A section of the program.

Doug has a preview of what he'll be screening available on his blog - i started watching, but then decided to save it for Wednesday so it will be more of a surprise. I'm excited for all of them, particularly this one - technology i'd pretty much trade my soul for. It holds the ability to capture that best impossible moment in movement that goes by too quickly to capture or hold on to. Maybe I love it because it's where the ephemeral and i meet back up post hypermedia, or maybe it's just my undying love of the matrix trilogy.

Anyway. Hope to see you there!

---

Date/Time: February 11, 2009 7-9pm

Tickets: $10 at the door, no reservations.

Location: Chez Bushwick, 304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11, Brooklyn, NY 11206.

Phone: 718.418.4405

Web: www.chezbushwick.net

Trains: L to Morgan Street

New Blog to Watch: Sarah Dahnke's Pen Pal Project

Good news!
Danceblogger Sarah Dahnke (who, i think it's fair at this point to consider a dance blog mogul) is at it again with a new project! It's called "the Pen Pal Project" (check it out here) and it utilizes video and blog space to network a few different lines of (visceral/visual/filmic) communication between dancers. It's an idea that has certainly been considered before: what is a way that artists who are far apart can utilize new technologies/options to interact and collaborate? However, this project stands out to me (aside from the fact that i'm participating in it) in intention and origin - i think Sarah's coming at it from a really interesting perspective.

Sarah writes:

This project was born out of questions about race and identity, wondering why we as a culture must judge people immediately based on physical appearance and skin color, despite the fact many do not identify with those who look similar to them.

I began to remember my elementary school days, when I had a pen pal in another country who never had any idea what I looked like, and it didn’t matter. We began to learn things about each other, about our families, our traditions and our lives without judging each other exclusively on looks.

I’ve collaborated with strangers around the country to trade dance videos and have a movement “conversation.” As this exchange evolves, I hope to learn about these women based on their movement choices and their choreographic topics. The regular back-and-forth between myself and three other collaborators will be documented on this blog. The final product will be edited into a video installation in 2009..

One thing that occurs to me in reading this description is the lovely paradox of trying to interface questions of race/identity and visual culture with the medium of film. Is it possible to use a visual medium to somehow resist the use of vision as a defining/binding/restricting action? Certainly film and dance share the power to utilize and subvert the viewer's gaze (yum! don't even get me started on gaze theory!) but i'm excited to try and access these ideas in the more casual and intimate pen pal format.

So check it out and get in on the action, and check out myfirst letter/winterbreakplaidkitchen dance here.

For your slow-mo pleasure...

I've been sucked into the APAP vortex, but I'm hoping to be back to posting after monday. The conference has been really interesting, invigorating, maddening, and exciting, and after i've gathered my thoughts about it a bit more, i'll push out some insights to shar about it with you.

In the meantime, check this out.
It's from Julia Griffin via dance-tech.net done with Phantom Camera.
I'm starting to storyboard for Julia's solo ("Glass Tree in Harlem"), and some of the slow-mo i'm lookgint to utilize has a similar arc as some of what they're doing here. I also think it's a great example of well-done dancefilm in that it points out how good a film can look with very simple movement and shots, given a great location and good lighting. Enjoy!



Find more videos like this on dance-tech.net

"Mobile" vs. "Stabile"

Returning from the Calder exhibit at the Whitney (where i was so graciously taken by Darla's art-loving parents) I find myself very excited about a new term I learned at the exhibit - a "stabile".

Alexander Calder, now famous for his ceiling-attached slightly-moving abstract modern art, had a great deal of works that were both stationary (as in not moving at all, ever) and semi-stationary (for example, a wire sculpture that doesn't re-arrange in relation to itself, but does move via the vibrations and indirect movements of those walking by and looking at it). I was reading on one of the walls that Jean Arp coined a term for this type of Calder's work - "Stabiles".

Defined as "an abstract construction that is completely stationary" the text at the exhibit noted that the point of deeming these works "stabiles" was to relate them to their moving counterparts, mobiles. In doing so, Calder was showing that these stationary works were mobiles too - only with these, the movement, shifting perspective, and kinetic nature of the art came from the viewer's movement, not the sculpture's.

Neat, right? I think it's a lovely concept, and one that's immediately relatable (at least for me...) to dance and dance film. While i think the most logical connection is to look at pieces where the audience is asked to move and change perspectives, there's not really my cup of tea and, having never made one, it would be a brief and unthurough analysis. However, i think that looking at dancefilm through the structure of "mobile" vs. "stabile" can be quite illuminating.

Here's how it makes sense to me:
If we're looking at it analytically from a kinesthetic point of view, it seems we have four options.

1.) camera stationary, dancers stationary
2.) camera moving, dancers stationary
3.) camera stationary, dancers moving and
4.) camera moving, dancers moving.

While there are certainly a million shades of gray (what happens when you have multiple dancers, some moving some not? are we defining movement spatially? viscerally? etc) almost all situations are at least comprised, at a base level, of these four options. In that case, since the camera takes the role of the viewers perspective, we could also look at it with this parallel:

1.) camera stationary, dancers stationary - "Super-stabile" (or whatever.)
2.) camera moving, dancers stationary - "Stabile"
3.) camera stationary, dancers moving - "Mobile"
4.) camera moving, dancers moving. - "Ultra-mobile"

While, at first glance, this might look like a spectrum from least to most movement, I don't think it is. As i've often argued, the way to kill a dance is to film it from a stationary tripod. Which is not to say that you can't create a stationary shot that really conveys a sense of movement, it's just to point out that sometimes a moving shot can convey movement in a more visceral way (take, if you will, the camera movement for kiss in the elevator in Bazz Luhrman's "Romeo + Juliet" - tiny clip w/i the preview - versus the (okay, semi-)stationary footage of Beyonce's "Single Ladies").





Though you could spend time arguing that one conveys movement better than the other, i'd be satiated just agreeing that they convey it differently - one wants you to see the dancing for all it's aesthetic and visceral glory, and one wants you to experience that glory viscerally as the camera moves for you.

This has been on my mind of late, because we're getting closer and closer to being able to film Julia's solo for the new piece ("Glass Tree in Harlem"). The basic question has been (as it is whenever i make a dance film): what is the best way to film this as to make an art of it in it's own right? I don't want to make an artifact of the performative version - i want to make a dancefilm - and so an intersecting and re-working of the performative version's aesthetic into an aesthetic that combines the technique of both dance and film is necessary. So how to do it? Is it better to show the movement from full front? Better to have the camera move around Julia since much of the piece is still or small movement? Better to have both Julia and the camera moving? Or is that too much, to shaky to be viewed seated?

I've begun to assemble a sort of mish mosh of shots, some still others moving. I think my vision for it (at this point, we're still pretty young) is to have most of the phrases (the piece is composed of 30+ four-second phrases and two longer phrases) shot still from the front, at various different perspectives (for example, one mid range full body shot, one close in resting on the floor, etc). THEN, for the two longer phrases, i'm working out the mechanics of a shot that combines choreographed camera and dancer movement. If we can pull it off like it is in my mind (maybe 76% chance?) it will be GORGEOUS, and i'm pretty excited for it.

Since we'll also be utilizing slow and fast motion as well as reversing in the editing of it, I'm hoping to do a test of this shot sometime soon so i can start playing with it on final cut and seeing if it's possible. I'll post whatever I make!

Check it out - "Choreographic Captures"

Just got word of a new site via dancetech.net - it's called "Choreographic Captures" and it's awesome. They have a bunch of high-qual dancefilms from their first competition (shorts no longer than 60 seconds) and an interesting format for their dissemination into the world ("via various pathways under the motto 'art for those who didn't ask for it'") such as in movie theaters in between previews. Exciting! You can also download a bunch for free!
Ch ch ch ch check it.

Just to make you happy...

http://view.break.com/575834 - Watch more free videos

New Videos! Rehearsal 10/25 at Topaz

Here are some new vids from our work on the 25th at Topaz. As you can see, we're using the general structure of "jumping around from section to section and trying to fit everything in". This was all in about a three hour period - touching on the main (or, most in focus right now) aspects of the piece. Enjoy!

Work on Muerte Chiquita:



Work on the MC Duet:



Julia's Twisting (the beginning of a new section?:



The Unison Phrase:



Collage of the Googlism Gestures:



Adventures in Lifting:


as always, feedback welcome!