We are all movie stars!
The three sessions this week were directed towards video and capture work to expand their movement vocabulary, eye to body coordination as well as support their growing ability to discuss their movement material and experiences.
Session 1, Monday 22 July
We use the warmup time to teach the women participants the ‘stick-dance’ done on Friday and we also reviewed the two scenes. As we had agreed, I was able to finish a very draft version of their individual videos in which they are dancing with their animation, well received with cheers and laughter! I also created a single video strip with the animations of each participant. After we had seen each ‘duet’ participants took turns going up on ‘stage’ to perform with the cartoon (a task not unlike early and current experiments with dance and new technologies where dancers perform duets with their electronic image and/or a live link to another space and now avatars). Afterwards, each participant had the opportunity to look at the animation strip and make a list of the movements in the animation that they could use to create their individual dance. We learned the terms solo, duet, trio. Each participant created their list: boxing, jumps, arms like flamenco, flying, salsa, walking side to side… We agreed that we will use this as ‘inspiration' (Maria Luisa’s contribution) on Wednesday to do new shooting on site.
Session 2, Wednesday 24 July
After the warm-up, we went to the bowls field, a site chosen by them, to do site shooting. The movement material was developed around improvisational tasks coming from each participant’s list of movement. We discussed how it could be developed further when it is danced in a different space.
Session 3, Friday 26 July
Maria Luisa and Mario are the only participants who can come for this session. We don’t cancel, we adapt and modify! In August we will be working towards a short film-essay/videodance that will share, through text and movement, their life story. The text will be devised from their experiences, narrated by them. I started by interviewing each one. From that I will script the text, and we will record in good audio conditions. This will be intermixed with the music score, all to be done by another project collaborator Gabriel Rivera Vázquez. Mario had to leave soon afterwards, Maria Luisa and I agree to start next week’s tasks and begin exploring her solo. We explored two sources of movement, her list of actions from the animation (she really liked a jump!), and two dance experiences which she narrated in her interview, her childhood ballet and flamenco classes. We are all set to being exploring solos, duets and trios next week!
