Choreographic Research
THE QUARANTINE SALSA
Choreography, Dance, and Lighting all collide in this motion capture edit and render to explore not only the current state of quarantine but exist alongside the movement exploration of Latin forms. Vamos a bailar! Enjoy!
Made by LROD
©LROD
Concept
My co-creator Tara Burns and I, aimed to create an Augmented Reality application used as an educational supplement to Laura Dixon Gottschild’s Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts.
Methodology
We chose ten pages that we would augment in the book. Each being accountable for five, we discussed ways that would most effectively visualize the textual content. We also were looking at different ways to activate our selected pages resulting in a blueprint containing a motion capture example of poly-rhythm, several reliefs of video examples of the pieces discussed in the book with sound and including the capability to stop and restart the video with a button, one relief picture of a definition with sound to clarify the pronunciation of the word ephebism and one relief of a black and white picture that changed to color. (burnsnation.wordpress.com)
ARGOTTSCHILD project demonstrates the various capacities in which augmented reality can be used to enhance the learning experience through text and connects our digital advances instantly in the classroom.
ARGOTTSCHILD makes possible the ability to connect with live video, 3D models, and word descriptions making learning more connected and efficient. The goal of this project is to have a prototype to share with departments, authors, and future scholars the possibilities of integrated technology.
ARGOTTSCHILD streamlines the learning experience for students and opens doors for future author’s inclusion of media components.
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©BURNS
Within the realms of outer space, this film investigates through the lens of futurism and Sci-fi a possible future or beginning of LROD and La Fractura. Ventilador means fan in Spanish. My focus for this film was to discover the realms of the word alien in relation to current political tensions, while also making visible a Chicana perspective of Sci-fi filmmaking. The installation was built in my home and the masks are made by LROD for a series of Borderland Performance dance films relevant to my research.
Directed, Edited, & Choreographed: LROD
Camera Choreography: Kathryn Nusa Logan
LROD y La Fractura
Music:
"Judge and Jury" (Prometheus Trailer) Audiomachine
"The Obsolete Man" by The Twilight Zone
Binary Code
Zenhiser Samples
Bluezone Corporation
Sound Response
Credit: "First footage from space" - May 12, 1959 by GE
Installation and Masks: LROD©
©LROD
©LRODFor my MFA field review, I read sources and viewed films that canvas the field of studies related to my final project to deepen my inception. One of the most relevant resources I read was Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement because it outlines a Chicana art-making structure I can identify choreographically within my project. A choreographic strategy, perhaps. Lineage. This book goes into depth about using identifiers such as Chicana/o and makes visible the precautions one might need towards not essentializing the identity, but moving beyond. The next book, The Surrealism Reader: An Anthology of Ideas connected many ideas because it draws from the minds of surrealist painters, sculptors, and fabricators and compiles their theory, poems, and process notes alongside their artwork. The spider-web of information resonates loudly because the surrealists were not all dreaming about surrealism, investing in surrealism, and consuming surrealism to produce surrealism. No, these artists were living and breathing while putting forth efforts to contribute to areas of phenomenology, perception, haunting, sciences, politics, and social constructs. These areas outside of surrealism better inform their art.
I am aware of the lineage.
I am active in the conversation.
I am prioritizing presence.
I am re-imagining the alternative.
Countering the perspective of The Surrealism Reader is another book called Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. In this book, the experiences, histories, artworks, and theories of Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, and Leonora Carrington are all captured and interwoven. The relevance here is the detour away from the inner circle of surrealist ideology which tends to be driven by patriarchal standards and erasure. Surrealism itself is the ability to continue to expand and shift ideas so that they do not remain fixed. I can use this as I begin to engage more with the choreography of the final project. However, I tend to be drawn more toward expanded perspectives and transgressed perspectives, so we will see how much of the surrealist inner circle maintains its presence. I do like the way the information is organized and accounted for in this book while directly speaking to the art produced.
On the other side, the viewings most influential were Yanira Castro’s Court/Garden and Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealers. Castro’s work encompasses the designed choreography, audience participation, and media installation and sections the piece into three parts. This work is relevant to my project because of its attention to the audience’s role in the work. However, by focusing here I am not neglecting my attention to costumes, choreography, and media, but if the audience’s design is not woven into the main components then my outcome will be not so subtle. One would not recognize this device, however, the subtlety of the design makes this experience magical. Out of my research so far, I can weave three different levels of engagement to support my project and involve the audience in different capacities.
Lastly, Sleep Dealers is like watching someone depict the future. While I can only hope Rivera’s future does not come to pass in the era of trump politics. This film is powerful to watch, noting, a sci-fi narrative constructed through the Latina/o perspective. This film at times was hard to sit with because of how real it seems with the current political USA/MX tensions. An important part of the film unites Mexican and Mexican Americans to overcome the USA’s oppression. This is not a common narrative and was refreshing to see.
As someone who has wondered much of this world existing in-between-ness the word—affinity—comes to find its importance. For even in this global trade of information there are migrations of movement, bodies, and materials, speaking to the larger ideas. Beyond the dualism. Even this I believe Donna Haraway wrote about already. So what is performing art doing?
Citations:
Ades, Dawn, Michael Richardson, and Krzysztof Fijałkowski. 2016. The Surrealism Reader: An Anthology of Ideas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Chadwick, Whitney. 2002. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. New York: Thames and Hudson.
González Rita, Noriega Chon, and Howard N. Fox. 2007. Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Castro Yanira. 2014. Court/Garden. Vimeo
Rivera, Alex. 2008. Sleep Dealer. DVD. 90 minutes. Maya Entertainment.
SHORTLIST (email LROD for LONGLIST)
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A short dance-film inspired by Frida Kahlo’s The Wounded Table. I am not only thinking about rituals, offrendas y mi Familia but also what is the camera’s (me essentially) relation to the people in the frame. I wanted to produce vibrant color in juxtaposition with darkness or the feeling of darkness. Creating worlds where inter-generational populations are included as well in the dance canon. Adelante!
Made by LROD y Artistas
Music: “Death Bed” by Alex Somers (Liminal Remix)
(I do not own the rights)
©LROD
Can we pause for a moment and take this in?…………. Ok…..Papaioannou has been living off my radar and I am excited to connect. I am inspired by this artist because of the range of skills he weaves together. He is in the vein of total dance theater. It would be freeing to have the ability (finances) to set my imagination free. I see this in Papaioannou’s work. All in all, the ability to imagine anything you want and see it come to fruition has to be life giving.
A quick backstory on Papaioannou who was born in Athens in 1964, Dimitris Papaioannou gained early recognition as a painter and comics artist, before his focus shifted to the performing arts, as director, choreographer, performer, and designer of sets, costumes, make up, and lighting.
Papaioannou’s work is visually captivating and in a way full of spectacle < but I sense intention and decision in the work which means it is not just for “art’s sake”. However, I enjoy how multi-talented the work is and at times simple. These worlds and movement aesthetics that Papaioannou is working with are aligned to the big dreams that live in my head. You know… The if you could make anything with unlimited resources and dancers – what does the result look like type dream. All in all, I am excited to see his work continue to unfold and continue to shift in the realms of imagination reality.
Also, I am very excited his New Work 1 will be shown and set on Pina Bausch’s dancers at Tanztheater Wuppertal May 2018.
©LROD
Date: October 26, 2017
Two levels in Creative Process v.210
Mapping out a creative process to connect two parts of my research resonating with Inside the Room and Outside the room branches. Inside the room’s design is led by the Experiment thread, while Outside the room reflects the Research thread. I was compiling this information from a word bank created in the Grad Composition class with Professor Susan Van Pelt Petry and peers. We then each took the word bank and made a visual map of our creative process.
For my challenge, I only used each word one time and practiced this assignment utilizing a present-moment embodiment. Meaning, that I only allowed myself one piece of paper with no option to have a do-over. Utilizing this assignment as a challenge I was aware of my devising boundaries. This project created a meditative space for me to sit with my pen to the paper, and process my process. Which usually feels meta, however, this project was calming while being informative. Most of my reflections have happened through a stream-of-consciousness or analytical essay, so it felt good to move towards a tangible medium to flush out information.
Further noting the attention and weight of each word resonating within my body I continue to let these words reconfigure inside my body. A digital roadway on the frontier of interconnectivity pulsing, sparking, and transferring connections that re-wires and retracts information before surging it back out again.
The system is operating.
I recognize these maps are abundant within my body, and mind and are the containers to hold, organize, and connect information used to make co-creative spaces. They are roadways of information. Living knowledge intrigues me as I delve into the internal self of producing art. Maybe the cyborg self is emerging underneath the surface below my skin and responding to the familiarity of the motherboard. While the image below relates to this emerging, I examine the depths and intricacies that are possible in overriding.
In trying to navigate my cyborg self-relationship I am drawn to this quote by Donna Haraway a professor, consciousness, and feminist scholar, “Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not based on original innocence, but based on seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other” (Haraway 2016, 55). My journey over the past five years has sent me plunging into words, writing, and language – preparing me for my conversations, arguments, and discourse today. Sometimes my consciousness rejects my impulse to respond, and my unconsciousness delivers connectors to reconnect broken bridges of thought. Tracing the map above throughout my creative process enables me to redirect how I am thinking, feeling, and exploring the material.
Responding to a recent visit by Vida Midgelow who presented at the DSA inaugural Scholarly Conference and is a Professor in Dance and Choreographic Studies at Middlesex University London says, “Coming into language is a significant process through which experiential, material and emergent forms of knowledge can be foregrounded, processed and shared” (Midgelow 1994). Previously, I rarely spoke my stance or dared to share the perspectives that ran rampant in my mind.
The information comes to me as this digital space allows me to write about these developing curiosities that are awakening. Identifying as an “other,” I do claim the tools to unearth my potential as a choreographic researcher, scholar, and free-thinker to engage in practices that move humanity towards change. Structures, rules, and traditions can be broken and reconfigured to make manifest new ways of operating that enhance artistic ability, connect technology and humanity, and revolutionize the central core of art-making.
The above image is how I imagine the framework for my discourse of choreographic research operating–or what it looks like to strategically choreograph, basically my mind on paper. The motherboard vector art is part – object – abstract – micro-processing – unit – internet integrated – modern – non-binary projects – future technological advances – daydreams.
Works Cited
Haraway, Donna J. and Cary Wolfe. 2016. Manifestly Haraway. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed October 25, 2017).
Midgelow, Vida. and Jane Bacon. 2014. “Creative Articulation Practice (CAP).” Forthcoming in Choreographic Practices. 5[2] https://www.academia.edu/9956868/Creative_Articulations_Process_CAP_ (accessed October 25, 2017)
©LROD
Date: December 5, 2017
After watching the premiere of In a Rhythm on Thursday night, I went home eager to read Miller’s program suggestion here. The link takes you to David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations of Burned Children” Please take a moment to read it….. I will wait. Miller’s program says this about Wallace, “He moves you through a devastating experience moment by moment, in time parallel to the most mundane” (Miller 2017). I realized as the piece started to unfold I was witnessing a consciously aware choreographic work. The mundane is interjected with the experience, while the syntax demonstrates seamless transmission to the reader, the clear distillation of the syntax is what makes the work. In a Rhythm was one of the best works I had seen in a long time because of this clarity in content that was supported strongly by the movement structuring.
Miller also uses the interview excerpt of Toni Morrison and Charlie Rose in the work, and you can watch the full interview here. The interview digs into writing about race, dismantling the white gaze, and discovering the stakes in her book Paradise (Morrison 1998). A book I will add to my list and I am looking forward to reading it during my winter break.
In a Rhythm deep dives into the syntax of movement, and looks at language as choreography in space and time. The choreography not only drew me in but kept me active within the work. The layers of the sections are seamless in their delivery unpacking nightmares of racism subtly sinking below the surface. I did question if I was cross-viewing the work since I was picking up on subtle movements that depict the narratives of racism, and the content of the text, and I shifted many times emotionally in this work. It wasn’t until Miller connected her personal story of seeing Emmett Till’s body on the cover of a magazine that I realized the state of deep sadness in my body, I was curious how long these feelings had been and was left in a profound state after the show ended. This state will take me a moment longer to process. Being in this moment allows me to travel down to the foundation of what I with art as an artist. Overall In a Rhythm seamlessly incorporates a movement language whose syntax was produced with the care of its writer – Bebe Miller.
If you get a chance to see this work I highly recommend it. You can find more on the Bebe Miller Company here and here.
I also recommend you read through Bebe Miller’s Ebook How Dancing is Built: The Making of In A Rhythm here. Bebe Miller has collected and described much of how the making of In a Rhythm came to be. This is a fascinating archive which appears to be written for the audience. On a larger scale, artists documenting and archiving their process is a strategy one can use to preserve the work. With the use of media, video, and blogging an artist can be in conversation with all parties that want to be involved in the work.
Miller, Bebe. 2017. In a Rythm. Wexner Center for the Arts. (Program). Columbus OH.
Morrison, Toni. 1998. Paradise . New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
©LROD