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"We are in the epoch
of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the
near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed... Well... yes, but is this what we want? As a dancer I am not so sure. There is something tenuous about dance. It has always been poised on a precipice, ready to fall, to die. I know its just a feeling, but when 8000 people go to the movies for every one that sees dance(1), what does that say about us and our future? Dancing is a precarious business. Of course, when we are involved in a production we don't think about these things. Movement begets movement and the process consumes all concerns of societal acceptance. We answer the existential questions by not answering them. Dancers let actions speak and the work itself be our best rationalization. Its a Cunningham-ian approach and yet I know that I am not alone when I say that we have our doubts. It is as if somehow we can not quite trust that it will still be there in the morning; that our instincts and creative impulses will continue to flow. It doesn't take much to kill this art form. Take, for example, the video projector... We've used them, my company and I, since they first came out. I remember
we rented one in 1995 that was as big as a VW. It had three cannon-like
lenses and cost 4,500 deutschmarks -- to rent! Now the same power
probably fits in a purse and every theater has a few hanging around. Sure,
we use them. Our last opera employed seven.(2) They don't destroy the piece, but the dance -- the movement, that thing that the dancers do with their bodies. Sometimes the destruction is total, sometimes only partial, but it is always a sacrifice. Of course, this isn't rocket science. Everyone who has ever seen or attempted combinations of movies (3) with live dance, theater or music has noticed how distracting they are. "Distracting" is the word one always hears, though this really doesn't describe the depth of our lack-of-presence when we are at the movies. Something happens to us around them. We don't see them, we enter them. Ruth Prangen, in her presentations on theater stage design, calls it "self-annihilation".(4) We lose connection to those around us, the usher, the popcorn, even ourselves -- it all vanishes in a flicker of light. Curious is only that we find this so enjoyable. The explanation seems to lie deep in our psychology and the nature of the medium. Do you have a television? Do you watch it? I did, and I found that the only way to _not_ watch it was to put it in attic (which, by the way, I highly recommend). Movies (and their modern extensions, television, video games, youtube, etc.) are penetrant and alluring to a bewildering degree. They are far more popular than live theater, dance and music ever was or ever will be.(5) Why? Remember that vision is not what our eyes see, not by a long shot. Rather it is a complex collaboration of eyeball and thought process. Huge amounts of the brain are dedicated to the task. The primary visual cortex, also called area V1, is the brain's largest area and one of over two dozen regions dedicated to vision (6). V1 serves many important functions. Among them, it relays visual information from the eyes to higher cortical visual areas. This means visual area V2, visual area V3, Visual area V4, visual area MT (sometimes called V5) and visual area DP.(7) To make a long story short, we _really_ respond to moving images and particularly moving human images. There is, in fact, a whole field of science devoted to motion perception (8). The brain, it seems, "plugs in" to the experience we call motion. It even goes so far as to insert or fill-in features that our eyes do not actually see. Movement is more a state of mind than a sensory input. Motion pictures of course, don't move; they rely on the effect known as "persistence of vision". This occurs when a series of similar images is displayed, each image lasting a fraction of a second. The illusion of motion is remarkably easy to attain and effective in captivating the viewer's attention. Simple mechanical devices using persistence of vision may have been known to the Chinese as early as the second century before Christ and the effect was certainly known to the ancient Romans (it was described in 65 BC by the poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus). The thaumatrope, daedalum, phenakistascope, phenakistoscope (also called the fantascope), zoetrope and zoogyroscope all preceded Muybridge and the invention of film movies(9). All these fantascopes apparently trigger something quite primal in our motion-hungry brains. They make us smile, laugh and cry. They can turn us on sexually or make us sick to our stomachs. We know they aren't real -- but somehow they are. Artists and people at the forefront of technology have been making movies for a long time and to great effect. Don't misunderstand me: I love movies. It is their combination with dance that worries me. We at Palindrome used to say, "whether they compliment or disturb
the dance depends on how they are implemented". This makes sense,
right? And after all, why shouldn't performing artists use ever medium
at our disposal to move their audiences? |
In workshops we taught strategies to help connect the movie to the live artist, for example: 1. make the image smaller and, the methods championed by my company between 1999 and 2005: 9. have the projection incorporate the performer's live image, and But here is the salient point: all of these methods are actually compromises. excuses. cop outs. The movie still distracts and weakens the performer. So what? Why not smiply compromise a little? Put a little movie into our work. They are certainly cool. They will certainly help sell tickets... Over my dead dancing ass. Here is my new list: 1. turn off the projector. In "What the Body does not Remember", Wim Vandekeybus, after many years of mixing movies with dance, "solved" the problem by separating the two -- first came the movie, then the dance. But I remember thinking, "nice film, nice dance, but remind me again, where's the connection?" We recognized that some of the players who were in film were also in the dance, but, for me at least, an intuitive connection was patently absent. My tendency today is to think that this is pretty much always the case. It has to be! This contradiction or dichotomy is fundamental to the way humans perceive movies vs. live events. The whys and wherefores are frankly beyond me. Perhaps it concerns two versus three dimensional perception? Does the brain have one pathway for "reality" and another for "illusions"? Are we hardwired in a way that makes the two mutually exclusive? (one would sort of hope so). And, all things being equal, is there some physiological reason we prefer the latter? Perhaps a neurobiologist could help us here. In any case, I know that when I think over the hundreds of attempts I have seen, including the dozen or so of my own, I am left with this conclusion. That this essay throws cold water on what so many fine piece makers and choreographers are doing these days, I appologize. I want to _encourage_ dance and dance/tech. There is little enough of it in this world. But just as technology can deminish the value of the performer, there are also ways which it can enliven and support (10). Count me for the latter and against the former.
20.feb.08
(1) see (5) below. All web sites accessed 2.2.08. |
