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DANZ QUARTERLY Issue 23 - April, May, June 2011
A Fixed Line on a Moving Stage – Line Dances, seven films for web and new media platforms
by Daniel Belton
photo by WJS Grenfell for Good Company Arts
Line Dances - seven films for web and new media platforms.
This project is created via the umbrella of Good Company Arts, and is supported by Creative New Zealand and the Otago Community Trust. As the 2009-10 CNZ Choreographic Fellow, Daniel Belton has developed a new moving image series fusing visual arts with dance and science. The World Premiere (seven cinematic journeys) was held at the Metropolis Cinema, Dunedin, New Zealand on October 10, 2010. It was also the official selection at the Dance on Camera Festival and the Big Screen Project, New York, USA, 2011. Daniel’s work was also the recipient of the Miniature Award in Dance, Best of 2010, NZ Listener Arts Awards and the Official Selection Critic’s Survey, DANZ Quarterly, for Outstanding Choreography Award.
2009-10 CNZ Choreographic Fellow, Daniel Belton, writes about his practice and latest dance film project, Line Dances.
Choreography in moving image is sculpting with light. You are working the plastic space of the screen in a very physical way, and you are inhabiting this visual window with the human body. The film window is as much instrument as the body is. Both speak to each other in a kinetic sense. We are on the edge of shadow when we engage in the architecture of light. Its spaces and forms come alive when given the pulse of human presence. The synesthetic event happens when these are synchronised with sound.
In my films the focus required to understand space, topography and perspective by choreographic means is portrayed through a succession of dance episodes. Where the music occupies a spatial territory in terms of sound, the filmed dance can offer the audience a sculptural domain.
I am making dance, music and line converge in the screen space as a painter does. It is painting in the film frame. The edit space is not just about imposing ideas. It is a place for discovery as well. It is an incubation space. You are working with light as a painter or sculptor does. Light is the fundamental constituent. The lines are live. The whole space is electrical - like there's current surging through everything. It is said that reflective surfaces are doorways to the world of spirit. The screen space is one such doorway, and as such, is an invitation.
My latest project, Line Dances, is a sense-filled journey for the viewer. Reaching back to Modernism and forward to the future. Klee said “One eye sees, the other feels”. This statement sits at the heart of what I aim to achieve with these films. Dance is as much visual as it is physical. Watching dance unfold live or on screen is emotive. Capturing the body moving on film holds the dance in time. Like a specimen. You can revisit it, dissect the dance, re-interpret and re-choreograph in the process of editing the film. And finally you print it. The printing of the dance pulls it back to a truly flat space experience, and ties it strongly to graphic art. Although movement is inherent, it has become artificial. The kinetic passages are given the heart of the machine. Like an iron lung on dance. However, there is great merit and beauty in these processes. There is true potential for expression and discovery within the confines of the technology available to us to capture and re-create dance. Choreography, quite literally, is the method for graphing body movement - artistic movements of the dancer are formulated into pattern, shape and design.
Line Dances demonstrates various levels of interaction between moving figure/body and other imposed geometric systems, aiming towards a fluid space, a modification and metamorphosis. I reference built environments, with aspirations towards an amalgam of the structural and the organic. This many dimensioned window presents the fabric of existence as malleable - there is pulse in the line; a natural geometry underlying all that moves.
Digital line, derived from Paul Klee's drawings, informs the collaboration between dancer and new technologies. Part of this exploration is the line relationship to quantum physics. The films are constructed from oscillating lines and the human figure in space. The vibrating strings of the piano render Anthony Ritchie's delightful compositions audible. The lines are being calibrated and re-calibrated by the presence of the dancer. Dancers become catalysts for acceleration in the screen space. These works are like moving paintings which conduct torrents of dance, and line, and colour. I use the visual matrix of the screen like a tuning field, seeking frequency. Fragments of dance are tuned into and out of for these kaleidoscopic journeys. This is literally choreographing the screen.
My dancers are fully immersed in a world of cosmic challenges. Digital weather, weather of physics, mathematical weather, choreographic weather, electrical surges, pulsing linear anomalies, dancing zeros and ones. I'm trying to create a theatre where the artificiality of the stage is evoked in cinema. We are working the plastic space of the screen in a very physical way, and we are inhabiting that visual window with the human body. This film window is as much instrument as the body is instrument. Both talk to each other in a kinetic sense.
The design in Line Dances embodies the screen as stage, and the stage as instrument. The films treat the visual space, or screen itself as an amplifier and a telescope. Early cameras present us with a miniature stage inside; concertina wings and heightened perspective. In this tight, incubating framework the dance, graphic, and sonic all belong together. It is a dialogue. The scientific visual references to String Theory and astrophysics suggest further spatial potential, and pull the work into a larger context. I have attempted to illustrate M-Theory, where 11-dimensional space is danced in and across lines extended from Klee’s studies of theatre life. We are creating an amplification and an anticipation that is magnetic. It is both old and new in the same breath. The dancers’ movement and intent shines through, revealing spirit at work.
The films are meditations on, and celebrations of space - the human figure pictured in time. In a truly plastic and choreographed screen, seven miniature stories in dance are presented. In the films the characters are taking steps to waking up in a spiritual sense. They have their own magic. They are touching, seeing and observing the lines and light in space. Are they walking along lines of destiny? They are creating the future as they make that walk. It is an odyssey in dance. Line, dance and music converge in the screen space to create as Klee said, a 'between world'.
Films online link: http://www.goodcompanyarts.com - click to enter site, then choose Line Dances.
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