Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 4, Issue 11 - August 2003

Dance Across Boundaries: Choreography Incorporates Digital Media

Tara Burns

INTRODUCTION

In November 2001, the University of Florida Digital Worlds Institute presented Dancing Beyond Boundaries. An unprecedented distance collaboration between artists, engineers, computer scientists and video producers that premiered at the Super Computing Global Conference. As a performer in this project I was inspired to research art, technology and projects that bring diverse people together to harness the promise of digital culture. To think about the possibilities of dance in a video or technological world gives choreographers such an enormous scope; it is impossible to think that one would not want to attempt it. The possibilities that arise from this research could define a new kind of performance.

Photo 1. People's Touring Project

This University Scholars Research granted me the opportunity to participate in the People’s Touring Project (PTP) and Navigating Gravity. PTP allowed me to perform across the East Coast creating an atmosphere for documentation and research. Navigating Gravity, a project in conjunction with the Digital World’s Institute and with Kelly Dipple allowed me to explore the collaborative process behind the merging of dance with networking to create a performance art medium on the brink of breaking technological and geographical boundaries.

NAVIGATING GRAVITY

The People’s Touring Project (PTP) in the summer of 2002, co-directed by my mentor, Kelly Drummond Cawthon and Adele Myers from Tulane University prepared me for Navigating Gravity. In PTP, I was able to gain knowledge about the basic workings of editing, camera equipment, and camera angles while in route touring to New Orleans, Jacksonville, Gainesville, and New York City. Traveling to different venues made it easy to visualize different atmospheres for digital facilitation. Performing and visiting diverse locations inspired ideas for digital and networking collaborations with dance and also raised questions. In what ways can digital technology be incorporated with dance and how does this incorporation happen? In fall of 2002, we began a solution.

Kelli Dipple, inspired by Dancing Beyond Boundaries, approached the University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute with a proposal to research new choreographic performance while working with dancers, audiences across the globe, and collaborating with digital artists. Her proposal, Navigating Gravity, was granted. We began by researching the many possibilities of mixed media content such as dance, prerecorded video, video stills, and choreographed gestural movement.

Gestural phrases, Pre-recorded movement, and Text

Dipple, previously researched a related project in Manchester, England and brought a wealth of knowledge with her to the University of Florida. Still experimenting with a rough cut of some video footage from Manchester, she created six video stills that were used later as the projects background images.

Figure 1. Video Stills used as Backgrounds on the Access Grid.

In the initial stages of our research it was important to create material to perform. The gestural movement was created first. Dipple came up with the five following exercises, centering around a chair, for generating the material: VULNERABLE: With your right hand touch five vulnerable parts of the body; DEPARTURES: Make five attempts to get off a chair unsuccessfully, emphasizing the diagonal; SITTING: Choose five ways of sitting in a chair with transitions from one position to the next; UNTITLED: Find three different ways to pick up and move the chair; FACE: Cover and reveal five parts of your face. We each completed the five tasks and attached our movement phrases to one another culminating in five conjoined or 10 non-conjoined movement phrases. Courtney Smith, a dance major here at University of Florida, came into the project to help us create more movement. After following the same five exercises, we attached her movement to those from the previous rehearsals. After the base movements were created, Tresa Ann Asselin from the Digital Worlds Institute recorded our movement experimenting with black and white, camera angles, close-ups, and spatial orientation.

Photo 2. Exercises used in in creating the material.

 

Close-ups tend to make the video more personal and show the audience a part of dance that they don’t normally see on the stage; Kelli Dipple found this to be a very interesting aspect she wished to explore. She thought that video footage of close up body parts would bring up the thought of being “a part of a whole.”

 

Photo 3. Close-up used in the video.

 

A performer from Manchester soon joined the process. Dipple worked with him to come up with movement using the same exercises we had used earlier and to develop text to be spoken during the performance. The following questions were asked when creating the text: What do you do in your room by yourself? What kind of thoughts do you have as your walking down the street? What kind of conversations do you have by yourself?

 

Working with the access grid

 

Interaction between different locations began on the access grid located in the Digital Worlds Institute. The access grid is similar to a huge computer monitor. The Digital Worlds Lab has a three-panel access grid with a camera over the middle panel. We also had a lipstick camera, a tiny hand held camera that allowed greater mobility. Sessions with the grid involved a conference between the University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Lab and Manchester University's Access Grid operators and participants. A typical agenda would be scripting content for the performance and rehearsals and run-throughs of the performance.

 

Photo 5. The Access Grid.

Visual design was a key factor in preparation for the performance. Video stills were used as background images on the access grid. The windows displayed pre-recorded video and/or the live feed from the performer in Manchester. They appeared over the background and were placed strategically to complement what was going on live. The grid windows were similar to computer windows in that they had grey boarders around, yet this being a performance, they were somewhat distracting. These boarders could not be removed, so they were incorporated into the vision as much as possible by placing words on the borders, similar to titling a window on your home computer. Each window had one of the following different titles: “gravity,” “sometimes when I…,” “when I’m on my own…in my…,” “sometimes…” and “…it’s just.” These titles were taken from the text which was spoken in the performance. There was one window of pre-recorded footage, two windows of the Manchester performer, one window of myself, and two windows of Kelli Dipple.

 

Photo 6. The use of the Access Grid in the Performance

 

The scripting of the performance could easily be broken up into a table to place each aspect with others happening at the same time. This enabled me as a performer to take movement cues off pre-recorded video, text, another performer across the grid, background changes, and/or Kelli Dipple, the performer in the chair next to me.

 

Table 1 Movement phrases, video, and backgrounds placed in scenes
Scene	Background	Pre-recorded Footage	Movement: Tara Burns	Movement	Manchester Performer Movement
Scene 1	Clouds	Window	Face and Vulnerable	Pacing	Movement in chair
Scene 2	Clouds	City	Face	Face	Face
Scene 3	Blue Sheet	Blue Sheet	Sitting	Text	Text
Scene 4	Brick	City	Departures	Departures	Departures
Scene 5	Yellow Line	Video inside video	Sitting	Sitting	Sitting
Scene 6	Red paint	Dance black and white	Vulnerable	Vulnerable	Vulnerable
Scene 7	Red paint	Dance	Manchester's Vulnerable Phrase in unison On September 12, 2002, Manchester, England and Gainesville, Florida came together for one of two performances. Audiences were in Manchester, Florida, and Sydney, Australia. Finding a time that would decently accommodate all locations was quite difficult. Unfortunately, Australia was viewing the performance at 8:00 a.m. Kelli Dipple traveled to Manchester on October 10, 2002 for a follow up performance to determine how her presence in Manchester instead of the University of Florida would affect the outcome. RESULTS While at the University of Florida, Kelli Dipple and I performed next to one another while linking to a performer in Manchester. We observed that the University of Florida audience was able to identify more with the two live performers in the local space than with the Manchester performer. The audience sees and connects with a relationship between the two live performers and seemed to lack a connection with the remote dancer. The Manchester audience viewed the performance similarly to the Florida audience in that there was a greater relationship to the live performer. Navigating Gravity showed the relationships between the local performers and their linked partners. Moments of connection made this project successful, the clarity of distance, the measures of communication taken to overcome this, and finding out the possibilities of connecting through the distance. CONCLUSION From this experience, I found that video footage can not only be used to document a performance, but can be implemented in the performance and used as a tool to show more intimate points that the audience would otherwise not be able to see. For example, a close up of a dancer’s face in motion could show an important emotion, getting across an idea that brings the audience closer to the dance and possibly right onstage with the dancers. Using video footage in a way to emphasize a topic or emotion with content other than dance could evoke new ideas in audience members. Communication between artists across an access grid can bring countries together and help create diverse works that incorporate all different cultures of artistic movement. Bringing all sides of the technological world together to show something new and innovative can help intertwine cultures and promote unity across the world. With the internet as a tool, we can create art that is accessible to the masses because it was designed for a networking medium. On a grander scale, future theaters could be built with huge access grids equipped with the capability to link live inter-continental performers with interactive audiences. Touch-screens installed on theater seats could let audiences choose the backgrounds, windows, and performers viewed that evening. Live performers could interact with remote performers. Access grids could offer the ability to use landscapes from other countries as moving backgrounds to theatrical sets, thus enhancing the audiences’ visual traversal. This research shows that these technological advances are right around the corner and when coupled with imagination, provide endless options for creative technologies. REFERENCES Access Grid. (No date). Access Grid [Online]. Available: http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/ [2003, January, 23]. Access Grid. (No date). Digital Worlds Institute: Access Grid [Online]. Available: http://www.digitalworlds.ufl.edu/Research/ag/default.htm [2001 - 2003]. Dancing Beyond Boundaries. (No date). Digital Worlds Institute: Dancing Beyond Boundaries [Online]. Available: http://www.digitalworlds.ufl.edu/SC2001/ [2001, November]. Dipple, Kelli. (No date). Navigating Gravity [Online]. Available: http://www.navigatinggravity.net/ [2002 - 2003]. --top-- Back to the Journal of Undergraduate Research College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | University Scholars Program | University of Florida | © University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611; (352) 846-2032.