DANZ QUARTERLY No 2 December 2005
Profile: Dancing on the Media
By Maria Gill
Acclaimed choreographer Shona McCullagh enjoys the challenge of creating meaning from the combination of technology and humanity. Awarded Creative New Zealand’s inaugural Senior Choreographic Fellowship in 2003, Shona took the opportunity to spend four weeks in the UK and New York researching a software product called Isadora.
Isadora, developed in the United States by Troika Ranch, is an interactive performance technology where the performer acts as a trigger for various media such as projection, light and sound. By using sensors such as a video camera lens, a microphone or sound sensors, the performer and the software synthesize to create other elements in the space.
Shona and her partner, composer John Gibson, and video artist and composer Michael Hodgeson collaborated on the project, finishing in May this year. They celebrated with a remarkable one-off showing in their seaside community, Leigh. Once written up and edited she will present the material to potential users, which could be art galleries, schools and tertiary institutions. She envisages designing installations that inspire children to express themselves physically or creating public space installations that are playful and inspire curiosity.
“Even to bring ideas into public washroom facilities and have something creative happening, whether it is sound or projection, would be fun.”
Shona is also working on another collaboration combining movement and technology – this time with Viennese designer David Fotter and architect Pip Cheshire. The ambitious Hyper Vortex project involves developing software that recognises movement and inspires collaboration between life forms and technology.
However, Shona balances her curiosity in technology with a healthy scepticism. She doesn’t want to create plastic two-dimensional performances but seeks to use technology to enhance the vulnerability of humanity and create imagery that is sensitive and beautiful.
“Once you have recorded something, the breath has been removed. You cannot supersede the simplicity of a body moving in space and the audience sensing the ‘presentness’ of that performance.”
Shona has also been experimenting with bodies moving in space by combining aerial and grounded work. For example she combined a circus suspension act with Indian Classical Dance to make a Bollywood act as a fundraiser for NBR Opera New Zealand Company.
Next year she plans to develop a concept for the New Zealand Women’s Awards that integrates opera, aerial, trapeze and ground performers and uses fabric as a component of the choreography.
She enjoys working with circus artists because they are hungry to explore creative ideas. For several corporate events she combined theatrics and narration to give a rational reason for them to do their ‘tricks’. She finds these environments very inspiring and creative and would love to see more collaboration between a cross- section of performers.
“I am always looking for something that is fresh and original and has a core that is truly creative, borne from some spring of inventiveness.”
It is important that she creates work that has integrity, honesty and does not take itself completely seriously. She dreams one day of creating a modern vaudevillian show in a seedy place. “It would create a sense of community across strands of artists, which in turn would seed future collaborations.”
It is this inventive and risk-taking approach to her work that has led to her national and international success as a dancer, choreographer and film director.
She has choreographed dances for major films such as King Kong; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and her own short films: Hurtle, Break and Fly. Soon, she will direct the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s The Nutcracker for a Christmas special on TVNZ.
In between projects she manages two businesses: Human Garden Productions, which provides creative concepts for a range of businesses; and The Human Garden Agency, which provides performers for film, television and live events.
Shona’s passion to encourage dancers to broaden their professional development and skill inspired her to set up The Human Garden Agency. Initially it was difficult getting the business going because the dance community was unused to the idea that professional representation was acceptable and productive. Also, producers resisted paying better rates for dancers. Internationally it is a given for performers to have professional representation.
A ‘poverty’ mentality, lack of knowledge about how to adequately market oneself as a performer, and a kind of snobbishness about earning money in the commercial sector were some of the reasoning behind this, she says. However, the agency has grown from strength to strength, now with over 680 dancers and specialist physical performers on the books, servicing many aspects of the industry. It often has sole responsibility for casting dance scenes in feature films.
She believes dancers could get more work if they were more versatile. “Most contemporary choreographers and dancers cannot survive in the art world alone. I’m very keen to create opportunities for people to have the best of both worlds. Corporate work actually offers opportunities for work to have a longer and more lucrative life.”
Post production work on her latest film Break, featuring Ursula Robb, Thomas Kiwi and Shona’s son Arlo Gibson, is complete and is due for release in New Zealand next year. Projects for 2006 include the choreography for Auckland Theatre Company’s Sweet Charity, choreography for the New Zealand School of Dance and the possibility of a New York musical film.
Shona McCullagh is on the DANZ Executive and Board.
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