“Blurred Borders has become a cultural San Diego dance tradition. Come see why.” – signonsandiego.com
“I’m interested in artists who are exploring something new, with a research-based integrity to the work that is fascinating and exciting and powerful…” -Patricia Rincon quoted in Janice Steinberg’s article Blurring the borders of sound, text, movement
The time to reflect on BODYPARTS has come. As part of the Blurred Borders Dance Festival no. 13, Patricia Rincon and I collaborated to bring together dance, visual imagery, set and music at the Saville Theater last May. The Patricia Rincon Dance Collective dancers put their best foot forth to reveal their explorations. Thanks to Rob Norberg and David Atchkinson, the projections orchestrated beautifully with the shifting set, lighting and choreography. Having created some distance between me and the event, I am able to look back at the process and bring out some of the relevant moments that built this work into the profound exploratory piece that it became.
Back in March, Patricia invited me to talk about a piece she had been thinking about that centered around the body as a somatic experience. She showed me an image of Miche Fabre Lewin’s “Mother of Bone” installation, made with newsprint role and body movement. There was something fascinating about the texture in that installation that reminded me of white clay dust and wood, and throug this image we began to explore which direction to proceed in. We looked at other bone images and x-rays while discussing the somatic process of revealing layers of memory in the body, and concealing/revealing in general. We asked ourselves how we could honor the body and the work it has done for us, and for people in general, in a ritualistic and celebratory way. It seemed that the work was laid out in front of us and I began my research.
The piece evolved from being called “Skin” to becoming “Bodyparts.” For me, the piece became a way of exploring how we see bone, within the skin container and without it, and how bone is a living, breathing entity that ages and we must care for. For Patricia, it seemed to evolve into an exploration of relationships and the constant human process of discovering who we are as we change, largely due to her experience of having knee surgery. Our visions intersected, but didn’t start coming together for me until we worked in the studio one day taking photographs of Patricia manipulating the skeleton. There was something about the way she held the skeleton that was serious, yet playful, that kinesthetically communicated her vision to me.
During this time, I must have gone through a couple dozen medical databases searching for images that conveyed the moods and textures we were looking for. I also spent a considerable amount of time looking for a way to project these images using MaxMSP/Jitter and VolTRON. That is, until I found HC Gilje’s Video Projection Tool (VPT), a stand-alone software tool he created in MaxMSP. This tool made it very easy to combine projected images with live video feed and allowed me to mask the video to match the exact contour of the box sculptures I was projecting on. After many hours of masking and programming, the piece was a success and I was very happy to have found VPT. I used the Korg NanoKontrol slider during rehearsals to pull up the images and figure out the exact order of the projections, much easier than using a mouse in the dark. The final timing of the projections was programmed into VPT.
I want to thank the “The Cardiac Atlas” by the Auckland MRI Research Group at http://atlas.scmr.org for providing the video of the right aorta, which brought the piece into the live video feed of dancer Keely Campbell with skeleton so beautifully. A thanks to Deepz at http://deepakrishna.wordpress.com for providing amazing images of bone tissue. There are many more that ought to be mentioned but have gotten lost in the databases of internet imagery.
Last but not least, a big thanks to Patricia Rincon for inviting me to go on this fabulous journey of re-discovering the body through the merger of dance and digital technology. I look forward to the future development of BODYPARTS and exploring the juxtaposition of body and projected image.
