Rehearsing Brooklyn Ballet's New Digital Collaboration: "Tracing Back"
Rehearsals with our ballet dancers for "Tracing Back" have started in earnest. Last week, Gabriela Galvez Espana, Duane Gosa, Miku Kawamura, Kerry Shea & Vincent Marra took a break from moving to watch a video of choreography Artistic Director Lynn Parkerson is referencing to create this new digitally-enhanced ballet.
New company member Gabriela Galvez Espana dances as Duane Gosa and Miku Kawamura look on
As the dancers learn some moves from the existing work in Brooklyn Ballet's repertory, Lynn has the luxury to focus less on the steps and more on the stylistic choices the dancers will make, as well as the spatial patterns that will ultimately become the work's scenery.
Lynn Parkerson demonstrates for the dancers
NYC Resistors, a Brooklyn-based hacking collective with a love of ballet, will set up a camera and work with the theatre to track the motion of our dancers. They'll create a scenic backdrop reflecting floor patterns of the ballet dancers and integrate them into the piece as a kind of technological visual art to enhance the choreography.
Lynn looks on at dancers Vincent Marra and Gabriela
All of us are intrigued by how this concept of charting and tracking the ballet dancers in space will become visual art on its own. While watching rehearsal, you can imagine the energy of the patterns. A scatterplot of dancers on the floor, slowly waking into movement before returning to low, crouched or seated positions. A duet that moves back and forth in a horizontal line upstage. Criss-crossed paths punctuated by large jumps. A central cluster of bodies characterized by calm, elegant motion, one dancer at a time.
How will that translate through technology?
Lynn directs Duane & Gabriela
But for now, in this stage of our preparation for our 2013 season, the focus lies on the technique and performance of the dancers. Lynn instructs Duane and Gabriela on their partnering, holding Gabriela's waist - "Really make sure she's secure here" - she directs.
DNA New York attended rehearsal last week and created a great video about our project.
Read more from DNA info here.
