January 2012
1 post
"Take a minute to unload whatever’s been bringing... →
December 2011
1 post
Had to be done... →
November 2011
3 posts
I get the feeling this will be very helpful... →
3 tags
"Big or small. Lies are lies."
Does anyone really think this?
Would you think the same of me if I lied about killing someone compared with lying about liking your new haircut? Can they really have the same impact?
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Project Development
What does it mean to be human?
When we researched about language being pretty much unique to humans, we decided that the act of a spoken lie is unique too.
What happens to your body when you lie, internally and externally?
How can some people be so calm on the outside, when the lie is doing so much to their body on the inside?
How can we show this through film…?
October 2011
2 posts
What does it mean to be human?
Ian Tattersall, anthropologist: “It’s not “what is human,” but what is unique: our extraordinary form of symbolic cognition.”
Nikolas Rose, sociologist: “Language and representation. We are the kind of creatures that ask those questions of ourselves.”
Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist: “The critical unique factor is language. Creativity. The religious and...
A New Project
‘Autobiographical Performance Art’ and ‘Embodying Site’ are this years topics for making our dance films, and I’m coming back to blogging to document my thoughts and research in a way that I can look back over when we come to create a portfolio. (‘We’ being me and a classmate.)
According to the ‘Tate’ website, in relation to performance...
September 2011
1 post
Creativity in Dancers... →
July 2011
1 post
5 tags
WatchMy blog was originally intended to document my Screen Dance module, and I just realised I didn’t ever include the finished project. The concept was ‘Singularity’, and the piece was created (and re-created) by a group of four BA Dance students (including myself) in around 4 weeks. You can see other versions at this vimeo page.
June 2011
2 posts
Dance Blog Directory →
A Healthy Diet For A Dancer →
truedance:
Some advice for dancers who want to get into shape.
May 2011
2 posts
4 tags
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“…as a basic focus, the dancers remain in physical touch, mutually supportive and...”
– Steve Paxton talking about Contact Improvisation.
He also said
When an apple fell on his head, Isaac Newton was inspired to describe his three laws of motion. These became the foundation of our ideas about physics. Being essentially objective, Newton ignored what it feels like to be the apple
(via...
April 2011
2 posts
5 tags
The Art of Sabbatical: A pub Q&A: Why bother with... →
theartofsabbatical:
Why bother with screendance and this research?
Our everyday is infused with screens and mediated images and it becomes more and more difficult to say what is just so and what is mediated by images and other data. Hence shouldn’t we develop an awareness as to how we are affected by the…
March 2011
11 posts
Blogging and Screendance
As I’m reaching the end of my blogging task I thought I’d reflect on how I’ve found the blogging, and my screendance module as a whole. Throughout the first term, I learnt a lot about what screendance is, and how wide a spectrum it covers. We were told to set up a blog and talk about what interests us related to Screendance.
What I found (and still find) hardest is finding...
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How can effects change footage?
I found two videos of vimeo, both included the same images/footage but were edited differently with different soundtracks, here is the first…
And the second…
The time of day (in both pieces) means that the lighting is quite soft, and the in the second piece the softness of the blurring and slow fading transitions, fit so much better in my opinion. The first one still works,...
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WatchSeaweed, part of a series of short film experiments.
I really enjoyed all of these short films, but i especially liked the one above. It’s a filming/editing technique I’d like to research so that I can try it in my future films. I expect the arms to freeze after they have been placed in position, but it makes it even more engaging to see them continue to move. I’ve watched this...
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Audio
This is the third version of our ‘singularity’ piece, after showing this we were told to think more carefully about the audio - what was in it and why we were using it. We actually stumbled on the audio by accident, we wanted the footage to be edited so that the body looked distorted, so we played some clips in reverse and liked the sound that was attached to them. For the...
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"Ballet and the Blogosphere"
“Leading ballet bloggers explore how ballet can benefit from social media networks and the latest that the ballet blogosphere has to offer. With Royal Ballet dancers Bennet Gartside and Kristen McNally, joined by the editors of leading ballet blog The Ballet Bag” - From the ‘Move It 2011’ website.
From listening to the interview this weekend it seems that social...
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Perception and Perspective
When we started our piece on ‘singularity’, we included several shots showing how perspective can disort or change what we can see. We used a single moving shot, but below are two stills to show the change.
We shot these scenes in a way that the camera lens becomes the viewers eye, they can only see from the angle we shoot from, therefore the illusion is created by the camera, not...
“The eye only sees what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
– Robertson Davis
This seems quite fitting with our piece, (in a literal sense). When fellow class members watched, they couldn’t identify certain body parts however our dance lecturer could. He made the comment that we know it’s a body on screen, so it just needs a closer look for it to...
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Black and White Versus Colour
The above are stills from our ‘Singularity’ film.
During editing we frequently played with black and white and colour to try and decide which is more effective. In the colour shot you can see the dancers skin tone and blemishes, giving it more identity, it is also a natural unedited image. The black and white feels colder and has less identity, the skin tone has been evened and...
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Singularity
One of our topics for assessment in screen dance is ‘Singularity’, after a research session with my group we came up with different ways we could go with it. We thought that the point where parralel lines meet as a singularity was really interesting. The actual meaning behind this is part of Einstein’s theory of relativity, and how all parallel lines eventually meet, but we...
January 2011
1 post
5 tags
Moment
‘Moment’ by Patricia Kim
The title of the piece, suggests the ‘flashback’ happens in one moment as she is only just stirring her tea as it ends, the middle section being in colour helps to show the shift to a different moment in time. The middle sections feels emotional, the man performs movements that control the woman. They don’t make any eye contact for quite...
December 2010
1 post
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Davey Dance Blog
Davey Dance Blog, improvised dance in different locations over Europe. Below shows ‘Jailhouse Rock’ at Alkatraz.
This isn’t about the technicality of the dance or camera work, but the simplicity of it. The different locations, weather and song give a different feel to each piece and it’s also interesting to see how the public react. If nothing else, it’s...
November 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Alan Danielson Workshop
Today I took part in workshop, lead by Alan Danielson, director of the José Limón institute. We had a two hour session of technique and two hours of repertoire. I’ve not studied limón technique until now and I learnt a lot over four hours. Limón (or Humphrey-Limón) technique is based on ‘being a human being’ and the fundamental parts of that, for example, the use of breathing in...
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“Nicky Clayton is scientific adviser to the Rambert Dance Company, a leading...”
– New Scientist, 2009, New Scientist, [online]. Available at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.900-nicky-clayton-dancing-with-darwin.html [Accessed 17 November 2010].
We’ve been talking about dramaturg’s in our professional context lessons, I think a scientific advisor would...
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The Body Morphic
“In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?” (2010) Untitled. 3rd October 2010. A peculiar Sprezzatura. [Online]. Available from http://apeculiarsprezzatura.tumblr.com/post/1240610616/washington-dc-metro-station-on-a-cold-january [Accesed 6th October 2010].
‘The Body Morphic’ by Indelible Dance.
This video reminds me of this...
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Stop Motion Blog →
A blog devoted to showcasing stop motion videos. They aren’t all dance, but the top ten are definitely worth watching.
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Her Morning Elegance
“In stop motion everything we do is about giving a convincing illusion of characters existing in a real space responding to each other.” Purves, 2008.
The music video for ‘Her Morning Elegance’, directed by Oren Lavie, Yuval & Merav Nathan.
Stop Motion - “Animation technique whereby the impression of movement is created by filming a sequence of one...
October 2010
3 posts
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Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' (1940)
“Other critics have credited Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) as the first unintentional long-form music video.” Billman, 2002”
Dance of the Hours - Fantasia
I’d never thought about animated dance as something which falls under the category of screen dance. After looking into this quote I realised the similarities and differences in using live dancers and using...
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Rosas Danst Rosas
“Rosas Danst Rosas (1983), had a sharp uniformity and minimalism…” Etchells, 2003.
An excerpt from Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s ’Rosas Danst Rosas’
Rosa Danst Rosa is a good example of how minimalist movement can prove to be very effective. Although minimalist in the set and selection of moves, the moves themselves are not small, each one is designed...
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Points in Space
“The title came from a favourite quotation of Cunningham’s, Albert Einstein’s statement “There are no fixed points in space,” which seemed to him to express his perception of the nature of the space in video, offering multiple points of view, rather than a single one.” Vaughn, 2002.
An extract from Merce Cunningham’s ‘Points in Space’ (1986).
The various...