Result!

Spent the whole day in the practice room in the deepest, darkest depths of The Arches today with Agoria and the rumble of the trains overhead for comfort working on material for my degree show. My initial idea of attaching cameras to dancers bodies doesn't look like it's going to work out - they were starting to make me feel sick never mind anyone else!

BUT I did spend more time working with torches and experimenting with different ways of filming and photographing the work. I love the initial results. It isn't a piece yet, but it will be. I just need to figure out a way of bringing it all together and making it "Screendance" in a way that'll keep everyone happy.

I don't really want to just photograph dancers with torches and slap it up onto a big screen so I need to figure out what I'm going to do with these images, how to manipulate them and make them into something more. Unfortunately I have a feeling that the one workshop that will help me figure all this out is After Effects, Monday-Wednesday next week and I'm busy editing Scottish Dance Theatre stuff for the Friday deadline.

Typical.

Photos here.

These Things Happen

A few weeks ago I worked with choreographer, Angus Balbernie, as a dancer/film maker on his current research. As a dancer, I was involved in improvisational tasks set by Angus to look into how different instructions affect movement quality. As a film maker, I filmed these improvisations whilst being involved in them. I finished the week with around about an hour of footage on my Mini DV and my mobile not really knowing what I was going to do with them. This morning, after looking at all the footage again, I remembered a piece of music that seems to tie all the footage together and make it something complete. I am now busily and happily editing away and reckon I'll be finished quite soon.

After weeks of being 'stuck' and having no ideas I've impressed myself this weekend with a few good ones. Long may it continue.

Lightbulb Moment

I decided a while ago that I was going to re-shoot 'itch', the film I made following a task as part of the Masterclass at The Space last term. I felt it had enough potential to do again and wanted to make the whole thing again with the dancers in costumes. I spent a while finding costumes I was happy with but was still considering ways I could develop the sound and lighting to improve them.

Last night I had it; the lightbulb moment.

Rather than using the strip lighting which is in place or proper studio lighting I've decided to use torches to light the space and the dancers. Each dancer will have 2 torches which they will shine into dark spots and onto each other. This way, as well as the film being a development of itself, it's also linking in with my other explorations into using light and photographing it. I now have clear images in my mind as to how the finished product will look which is the way I normally work so I'm pleased at the moment and ready to get going.

Dark Matter at Montage

I've just found out that Dark Matter will be screened at Montage Video Dance Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa this weekend. I applied to the festival a few weeks ago and had actually forgotten it was this weekend so it was quite a surprise to receive the email. The event, curated by Jeanette Ginslov and Gerard Bester of Walking Gusto Productions, was named a 'world beater' by Adrienne Sichel last year and will include a line up of dance videos that are exciting, innovative and astounding. I'm especially pleased to have Dark Matter selected as Katrina McPherson's Moment was shown last year as was Nascent by Gina Czarnecki.

You can view an excerpt from Dark Matter here and let me know what you think or if you have to be in Johannesburg this weekend pop in to the Wits Downstairs Theatre.

Dance-Tech.net

I discovered this networking site a few days ago although I had already been receiving emails from them via another site which I can't remember right now. It's similar to bebo, MySpace or Facebook in that people create profiles, add photos, videos, blogs then chat with friends on the site. The main difference being that everyone on the site has an interest in dance technology whether it's screendance, installations or new media work. I'm already slightly addicted to the site and am frantically adding friends... join up and add me now.

La, La, La Human Steps

Amazing dancers, interesting visuals and talented live musicians yet I still felt myself dozing off. Almost 2 hours of arm flapping and unnecessary repetition really made me question the ticket price and the hype. It's been ages since I last saw a dance piece I really enjoyed and I find it really frustrating that artists and companies who are regularly receiving huge amounts of funding don't seem to be developing their ideas fully. It seems like the same old story of people who make really interesting, engaging artworks on a non-existent budget but lose their touch when given financial support. It would still be nice to test that theory for myself though!

Richard Layzell Performance Workshop

I was looking forward to this workshop as I'm feeling a bit frustrated by the lack of dance on this Screendance course. I know that's not the aim of the Masters but I do miss moving and feeling physical so I was glad when this workshop came up. The workshop covered a lot of things I've done before and I didn't really feel like I learned anything new to be completely honest but it was interesting doing these exercises with people from a different discipline, people not so comfortable or used to being physical and performing. This also meant that the group had different ideas and a different dynamic to anything I had experienced before which was interesting to work with.

We pulled together a number of short pieces today to produce 25-30 minutes worth of a performance which we performed in front of around 20 people from different courses and year groups. The performance seemed to go fairly well but without any audience feedback it was difficult to tell.

Running Order

Meet & Greet - will the audience receive a warm welcome, nasty or neutral?
Herding & Circling - the audience become the herd and are physically moved into a darkened room before witnessing 2 performers circling a table lamp.
Humming - the light is turned off and the performers begin humming which leads into Spanish song.
Set of Rules - see below and try it for yourself.
Sleigh - various performers are pulled around the space on a blue wicker sled.
Thrilling, Willing and Unstable (or as I renamed it, Thrilling, Unwilling and Stable) - Jonny lies on the floor under a board, I tap dance directly above his head.
Exit - the audience are lead to the bus stop.

Dog Walker Cafe

I was approached by James at Jarprocess a few weeks ago to film a short dance piece for a dream sequence in his latest film, Dog Walker Cafe. Bitterly cold and wearing far too few layers we all met up in a car park in Clydebank to dance around by car headlight on Tuesday evening. Me plus 5 other FireBox dancers were involved in the shoot using material I choreographed specifically for this. The plan was to involve some still images of us working with lights but James felt it wasn't necessary and that he had enough without it. The benefit of this is that I can develop this more and work on it properly for a new piece.

FireBox Rehearsal

I had the dancers in the studio for a few hours today working on some new material for a film we've been asked to be involved in (more on that next time) but I took the opportunity to try out working with lights and slow shutter speed techniques. Considering the dancers were improvising and we were only using mobile phones for lights I think the results are quite promising...



The top 2 images were taken with an 8 second shutter and the bottom 2 were taken with 4 second shutters. Even just being in the studio catching glimpses of the movement and the dancers with the naked eye was interesting so I'm looking forward to developing this idea further and think, with choreographed movement and photography, the effects could be very interesting.

The Corrie Fee Fugues

I was invited to participate in Angus Balbernie's Dance House Creative Lab this week focusing on the meaning of movement in performance. My role was to split my time between being a dancer and filmer so I could experience and compare both. I spent a lot of time during the week filming while dancing on both my Mini DV and mobile phone. The footage below is unedited and was taken on my mobile on the last day. I intend to edit the rest of the footage of the improvisations into a short dance film piece.