Studio

This post is concerned with working through ideas in the dance studio – workshoping for the street and re-editing in Final Cut Studio. The clips in the dance studio are titled Studio 1 – 9. Please note, I will be critiquing each piece in the 'Comments' button under each clip. Note too, that this is an ongoing process of appraisal for me. I may add more comments at a later date or even change my mind about certain aspects. The comments should not be taken as definitive and a one-time only, critical voice.

Only clips 1 – 4 are presented on this post page. For clips 5 – 9 please go to ‘Older Posts’ at the bottom of this post.

The first two clips above these are re-edits from the previous post, seeking to increase the degree of poignancy in the material. In ‘Workshop Re-edit Concourse Roll’ I am indebted to Steve Gallagher (Wellington composer) for composing the audio for the piece.

In the Studio series I have been exploring a range of structured-improvisation possibilities for dueting, which are intent on making the dancers both, vessels for the development of the concepts but also allowing them to be 'portable' in a crowded setting. Rather than looking for dramatic movement, we are keeping our pelvis' (and therefore, our centres) for the most part, under us and weight is shared in varying degrees without entering into big lifts or overt flying. The kind of movement which might be just missed – but not quite, in a crowded space.

Tensions are being examined here; a tool for mapping the territory of an exchange between two people. Maybe they are strangers. Perhaps they are friends, or lovers. Perhaps the tensions ensure that the two people move through all of these states during their conversation together.

Ultimately, a duality becomes visible: The tensions being used as a vehicle to traverse the territory being examined - that of an engagement of sorts – become, themselves, the very territory they are seeking to map. I wanted the opposing forces to create through contrast, elements in the composition which inform, catalyze and articulate to a significant extent, the nature and course of the narrative taking place. I wanted to introduce an abrasive rub in both the reticence and commitment visible in the engaging, conversing, arguing, acquiescing, leaving. Somewhere ahead pathos may emerge in this terrain. More work to come.

I have arranged the clips from 1 – 9 in order of proximity from the camera, gradually getting closer to the dancers. The first setting includes the corridor in the view. My intention here was to create a distant impression of two figures engaged in … what? They are seen mostly silhouetted against the light, morphing
and separating – a view witnessed in the distance down a city alley or precinct, perhaps reminiscent of Michal Rovner`s 1999 distant, smudged, figure groups. (This reference just occurred to me – Rovner`s figures are mysterious, their movements of cellular coalescing and parting, enigmatic). The following clips bring the viewer closer, but I am still interested in creating a limited view, so the figures ‘hide’ at the end of the corridor, moving in and out of the entrance/view-finder. The final clips are concerned with the entrance becoming a part of the figures and vice-versa; a central element of the inhabited space shaping the appearance of the dancers through our constrained view – like the moving crowds would provide only partial glimpses of the subject in a busy street/portico (Wellington Railway Station concourse) – often only parts of given bodies are visible in crowds.

Please see my comments made under each movie clip and feel welcome to make any comments of your own.