A Year Inside The Australian Ballet: Episode 2

Recently I shared a glimpse into the secret lives of dancers, which included episode one of the new web series A Year Inside The Australian Ballet. In the latest installment of the ten-part series on the ins and outs, highs and lows of life in The Australian Ballet, Corps de Ballet member Jake Mangakahia gets a major break: working with Stephen Page on his new ballet. See through his eyes as the work goes from studio to stage.

And You Can Dance. For Inspiration. (Five Views On Dance)

I didn’t intend to make dance the theme of the week but as it happens sometimes all of the ideas come together at once and so, in case you missed them earlier, here they are, five views on dance:

• Monday: Dancers In Slow Motion
• Tuesday: The Secret Lives Of Dancers
• Wednesday: David Parsons’ Caught Vs Wrecking Crew Orchestra’s Tron
• Thursday: Dance Your PH.D.
• Friday: A Modest Proposal By John Bohannon: Get Rid Of Powerpoint And Use Dancers Instead

For more posts on dance check out the Dance category. I also encourage you to check out The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life and The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together, two fantastic books by one of America’s greatests choreographers and collaborators Twyla Tharp. 

A Modest Proposal By John Bohannon: Get Rid Of Powerpoint And Use Dancers Instead

It started with “Dance You PH.D.” (covered here yesterday) and now John Bohannon, accompanied by Black Label Movement, takes the concept of communicating ideas through dance further in this fantastic TEDxBrussels talk. 

In a follow up post at TED.com he explains how and why the talk came to be. 

Over the summer, I worked with Black Label Movement, a dance company based in Minneapolis led by Carl Flink. We had a shoestring budget, not even enough to get all the dancers to Brussels. So we had to create the dance and rehearse in Minneapolis in our spare time for free. Then we hired 6 Brussels-based dancers and arrived in Brussels 10 days early to rehearse with them. I’m amazed we pulled it off, but Carl wasn’t surprised. Professional dancers find this kind of pressure routine.

The piece changed drastically over the course of its creation. As I got to know the dancers and see how they struggled to make ends meet, especially when injuries occur without healthcare coverage, my mood darkened. What began as a small piece of optimistic theater about science turned into a satire about the status of artists in the US. As inspiration, I looked back to Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, “A Modest Proposal,” It was a masterpiece of political satire that proposed a seemingly rational solution to the problem of the poor in Ireland: They should sell their babies as food, generating much-needed income and reducing their population in one stroke. It was a reply to some of the brutal utilitarian policies being discussed at the time by the aristocracy. Where you hear antique language in my presentation, I am quoting Swift verbatim.

Dance Your PH.D.

In 2008 science writer John Bohannon launched the first Dance Your PH.D. contest. The rules were simple, each dance had to be based on a scientist’s Ph.D. research, and that scientist had to be part of the dance. In an article he asked the question “Can Scientists Dance?” and the answer turns out to be yes, yes they can. Since then The New York Times and NPR have reported on the contest. 

I think the idea is inspired. Forcing scientist to get our of their heads and connect with their bodies to convey complex concepts probably led to additional moments of insight.

Below you can see for yourself last year’s winner, which besides showing new physics research in dance form also demonstrates a great panache for filmmaking reminiscent of the dance pieces discussed here yesterday. 

Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story by Joel Miller. 

(via ScienceMag.org)

David Parsons' Caught vs Wrecking Crew Orchestra's Tron

In 1982 David Parsons premiered Caught, a work that he performed himself. Almost instantly it became a masterpiece of modern dance. Using simple light cues and a strobe Caught features more than 100 leaps in six minutes by a solo dancer who is repeatedly trapped in mid-motion by the strobe lights, to create an illusion of flight. It has been performed thousands of times worldwide, for nearly thirty years.

The video below does not do justice to the piece, it just gives an overall feeling of what it looks like. In the mid 90s I saw it live for the first time. What the video below is missing is how all your senses are engaged when seen in a theater. You sit in absolute darkness and every time the strobe comes on you see an even more incredible leap frozen in time. You wonder how on earth Parsons can time the leaps with such precision while in the dark. You hear the breathing accelerating as the piece goes on, you hear the loud steps with every landing and jump, you are well aware that what you are looking at seems like magic but is indeed a man working very hard. It is mesmerizing. I’ve seen the piece live 5 times over the years and every time, no matter the audience or location at the end everyone erupts in applause. 

A few weeks back a Tron-inspired dance by the Wrecking Crew Orchestra made the rounds. This new routine by the Japanese dance team relies on specially-designed suits covered with wireless, light-emitting strings that can be controlled remotely. As soon as I saw it I thought of Caught. 

The dancers behind both of these pieces work hard, and have a few tricks up their sleeves, to create amazing dance illusions. It is easy to see that there is direct conceptual connection between the two, becuase, as I always say here, everything is a remix.