Screendance Workshop @ U of U

I'm thrilled to say that I was able to attend our friend Ellen Bromberg's biennial (more or less) screendance workshop at the University of Utah. The was my first real introduction to making screendance – also known as dance for camera, dance for video, video dance, cinédance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This workshop focused on editing as a form of choreography – something I had never considered – and was taught by the fabulous Simon Fildes (that's him in the top right frame).

[The last time the Screendance festival convened, it was Simon's wife, the extraordinary videographer Katrina McPherson who led the event. The collectively constitute Goat Media.]

The basic idea is to take lots and lots of random footage of dance and then create the order, transitions, and meaning by selecting, cutting, placing, repeating, and so on. I had always assumed that the choreography was created, the filming/video was blocked out, and things essentially went in a linear order. Oh, silly me; nothing of the sort. Film here, film there, throw it all in a big pile and then start mixing and matching. Amazing things can emerge.

Take a look at anything by Simon for stellar examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DicA-jC1gS8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFdZ71K7XQU

Or my masterpiece, built using random bits and pieces of footage that Simon provided for our experimentation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOWf9KOvwSY

"Hello World" Video from RDT (Now with Audio!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lJFRMwEUNQ La voilà!  The edited – and now sonified! –  video from our fabulous art/technology creation, "Hello World." Although I posted on this recently, here's the basic idea: "Hello World" is a collaboration between my lovely wife, choreographer Jacque Lynn Bell, and me. I did the sound editing/design and created the projected visuals in Processing. The piece was performed by Repertory Dance Theatre (rdtutah.org) at the Rose Wagner Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah, 4-6 October 2012. The videography and editing were both by Lynne Wimmer (thank you, Lynne!).

Hello World at RDT

Jacque (my wife the choreographer) and I were invited to create a dance/technology piece for Repertory Dance Theatre, one of Utah's major modern dance companies, to be included in their fall show, Embark, on 04-06 October 2012. It was a great experience! We called it "Hello World," after the computer programming exercise that always represents the first step when learning a new language. (See the Wikipedia entry on "Hello World" programs here.) I created the visuals that were projected during the performance (mostly in Processing) and did the sound design (lots of white noise involved).

Here are some previews/reviews:

• A preview from the Salt Lake Tribune
• An interview from the City Weekly
• A review from the Salt Lake Tribune
• A review from the Deseret News
• A short review in the local blog loveDANCEmore

In addition, two artistic directors who shall remain unnamed said it was the best use of projections that they had ever seen in a dance performance! (Secret to success: Don't compete with the dancers.)

(Also, RDT published a study guide for teachers, in which all of the pieces in the show are described. The PDF is available here.)

I hope this is the first of many, many more things to come.

UPDATE: See the video in the post "Hello Word" video from RDT (now with audio!)"