Technical Residency
And now for the fun part...
What I have envisioned for The Art of Stealing is a tad ambitious and requires more than just the traditional stage set up...
Traditionally the audience sits in front of a stage and views dance in a presentational form. But of course, this is too simple for me to facilitate my post apocalyptic world of thieves and I'm up for the challenge as well.
The purpose of our tech residency (a total of 4 jam packed days we had in August) was to start introducing production elements into the creative equation. This proved to be the starting point to begin working with my production collaborators as well as test out a template for my non-traditional seating idea to see if it's even logistically possible to set up. Basically I want to sit the audience on both sides of the performance so that the dancers and the action can be viewed from multiple angles. This is all exciting in theory but now there are questions revolving around if the idea still artistically sound and if it's even financially possible.
Those 4 days in the theatre took a lot of man power, hours and energy of which I am beyond grateful for because I now can't imagine waiting until the premiere to address these concerns and with a looming presentation deadline. Our time in the theatre truly helped in the development of scenes we had drafted for Dancing on the Edge and take them a step further with light, sound and texture. We were starting to build a world and not just make a dance performance. I still want to push for our proposed set up--the experience confirmed that my imagination aligns with what I have tangibly created. Or maybe I just really, really like it. But aren't we as artists supposed to like what we create?
Mike Inwood, our fantastic lighting designer, flew in from New York and played a huge part of the execution of this residency. I love working with Mike. He asks such great artistic questions that force me to figure out and/or verbalize my decisions. He brings so much quality and care in regards to his role that it makes me feel incredibly privileged to work with such a generous artist. This also marked the beginning of introducing Marc Stewart's sound into the space with us. Working with Marc is always fun because I just get to let my imagination go wild when working with him. He is also incredibly talented and again a wonderful, generous artist. There are times I feel so completely vague in the ideas I bring to the table but he takes my notes and makes these incredible sounds and compositions that elevate my scenes and ideas. It's only the beginning and I'm already so excited with what has been proposed re: sound.
This also marked a first for me--working with projection. I don't want or need a lot. This is the first time I will be working with Jenn Strom as a video artist and it's already a great learning experience for the both of us. I'm not really interested in anything too complicated. But as I create The Art of Stealing the best way I can describe it is...well...if I were to write my own post apocalyptic graphic novel this would be it. So like a graphic novel or a comic there are key moments and images that I would to reinforce with lines of text to frame a body, movement or introduce scenes.
Originally I projected our tech residency to be 2 weeks but reality gave us 4 days. But let me tell you: you can get a lot of work done in 4 days! I cannot for the life of me imagine not of having that residency. It developed existing ideas, gave us new questions and basically confirmed that I was on to something...