What Goes Up...

FireBox dancers and friends, Gillian and Suzi, have been going to pole dancing classes recently and have really got into the whole thing. As well as being the source of endless anecdotes about clammy palms and upside down spins they have also decided that pole dancing, combined with contemporary, would be a good subject for a dance film.

The idea came to them a while ago and they asked me to get involved in the filming/editing part of it which is scheduled for Monday (26th May). I plan to work with high end and low end cameras to create an interesting quality to the film which will reflect the perceived differences in the dance forms.

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.

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!

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.

Day 1 Creative Lab

LAB

Movement
Bodyslam Technique - Low fly/Dodging/Material from Blok

Idea
Anonymity - Dancers as Audience/Video Feed/Black&White film

Technical
Dark - Projector light only/Disorientate audience/Non-traditional positioning/Crash mat throughout space/Camera moves

I started work on material today that will be used for the rest of the week. It was fairly slow to get going but managed to get 1 full sequence done with ideas for another one to do tomorrow when Joan (one of my FireBox dancers) joins me. I always find it difficult to get started when I'm on my own so made use of the day by filming little sections and seeing what they look like on the screen. The space is very bare so it all looks a bit sterile at the moment, especially with just me here, but I can imagine it already in different contexts.