Project4: Surface

Subject: Brooke Jones

Project4 Time: 4.5hrs

Project52 Time: 23hrs

So this week I've been a little sick which has thrown me a lot of schedule! I just finished and uploaded this week's Project about 2 hours ago. I knew what I wanted to do this week, but I had no time or energy to accomplish it until Saturday morning. I asked Brooke (whose a beautiful dancer from Denver, CO and new Lunger) to come over to my apartment building in the morning, and we got to work right away.

I wanted to focus on a bit sleeker of a look, compared to the other Projects up until this point. Brooke and I decided to focus on the idea of surface. All of the movement is either inspired by or dependent on a surface. We also wanted to touch on the idea of cloning just a bit. Almost as if another form of this person is surfacing. 

We started by creating some phrase work and then allowed Brooke to do her thing and improvise a bit to get a good amount of footage. From here I was able to edit the footage to get what we needed. We only spent about 2.5 hours creating and filming. (That even included a run to B&H to grab a tripod!)

I just started using Motion to edit and I had a lot of fun with this footage. I took me about 2 hours to edit. It's a quick project, but I really enjoy the finished product.

Let me know your thoughts!

Project3: Monocarp

Subject: Ali Castro

Project3 Time: 5hrs

Project52 Time: 18.5hrs

Project3: Monocarp is featuring longtime Lunger and my best friend, Ali Castro. We were leading a workshop at Princeton University for diSiac Dance Company this past weekend and got so inspired by the beautiful campus that we decided to do a Project right then and there! I was admiring the architecture of the campus all day. In particular, I loved the contrast of the greenery and the use of stone and brick in the all of the buildings. I didn't know what I wanted to do for Project3, but I definitely wanted to play with this idea. 

Ali rehearsing in her coat

We started out by just making a phrase in the East Pyne building. It's a beautiful building, with an absolutely fantastic courtyard in the middle. (It actually houses the foreign language courses, I beleive) It was pretty cold so we made up the phrase in our coats rather quickly. Once Ali had the phrase we shot it quickly from a couple of different angles and then did a few close ups. Overall, this portion of the shoot took around 1.5 hrs.

From there, we moved on to find a place to film the contrast we stumbled upon an area that we had walked through earlier that day called the Prospect Gardens. It is behind Prospect House where President Woodrow Wilson once lived! We wandered to a less manicured area of the garden and jumped into the middle of some shrubbery. I gave Ali a very short gesture phrase and had her elaborate off of it. I shot this from three different angles and had her lay down for a few close ups. We had to do this pretty fast as the sun was going down and I didn't want to run into the graininess problem that I had in Project2. We shot this segment in only 30 min.

I edited this one quite easily. It only took me around 2 hrs. It just sort of fell together how I wanted it. I decided to play with a bit of trailing in the footage because I wanted to not only show the architecture of the grounds but also the structures in the movement. I find that when the trails increase in number the movement really takes a 3-dimensional shape that I find very fascinating. 

After looking at the footage I felt that her character embodied something rather magical, or nymphish. I also thought that the contrasting stone footage had a heavy feeling, especially when paired with the movement. I had the idea of creating a monocarpic person. Someone who blooms and celebrates her sensuality and only once and then passes and is in a more barren state. 

So now I present to you: Project3: Monocarp

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project2: Soiree

Subject: Shelby Colona

Project1 Time: 6.5hrs

Project52 Time: 13.5hrs

Project2 happened very randomly. I was going to work with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and on my walk there I thought to myself, "I'm going to film tonight!" I texted all of the dancers that have committed to this project and found out who was available. After deciding who the subject would be, Shelby Colona, I had to figure out where we would shoot at. I remembered a location in Central Park called the Bethesda Arcade. It's a hauntingly stunning tiled arcade underneath the Bethesda Terrace located right by the (go figure) Bethesda Fountain. 

Inspiration photos by Nir Arieli. Dancers: Nathan Madden and Esme Boyce

I first found the location after viewing some photos by my friend and incredible visual artist, Nir Arieli. When I saw his photos years ago I knew that one day I would create something in that space. The space has an emptiness that I'm drawn to. And the fact that it's in the middle of one of the busiest parks in the world, gives it that little bit of irony that I love.

Since you can't just go film in Central Park, we had to be a little sneaky. It doesn't help that we aren't filming some natural pedestrian video that we could perhaps be mistaken as tourists. No, we decided to have a crazed girl waltzing on her own, drinking wine (illegal), throwing the glasses (also illegal), and filming in one of the parks most treasured historical places of architecture (illegal without a permit... which we didn't have). Needless to say, we had to be careful.

We decided to shoot at 11:30pm. We figured there wouldn't be anyone in the park really, other than the few stray dogs and crazies. Since the park doesn't close until 1am this gave us more than enough time to shoot what we wanted. We didn't prep movement for this shoot at all. I gave Shelby a structured improvisation and a few directives to follow and I let her do her thing! I trust her enough that I felt comfortable that I would get the shots I wanted. We ran into the small problem that there were no outlets to plug any extra lighting into, so the shots were a little dark and have a little too much grain in them for my liking, but overall I think the shoot went great! We were in and out of there in 2 hours. 

Editing this one was a toughie. I was struggling a lot with the quality of the footage because of the graininess. Once I got over that and decided it was ok, I just had to figure out how I wanted to present the movement. I knew I wanted a slight narrative, but I didn't know how to get it. I decided to create an atmosphere of a cocktail party. We see Shelby being social and flirty while enjoying her wine, and assume there are others around her. When we see the wide shot we realize she's alone, talking and having her own little soiree. She starts a little drunken dance and accidentally throws her glass. The dance continues and by time it smashes she is awaken from her drunken dream and realizes in the sober world she is alone. It took me about 4.5 hrs to edit this baby!

Let me know what you thought! 

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project1: Enshroud

Subject: Alex Cottone

Project1 Time: 7hrs

Project52 Time: 7hrs

Project1 was a collaboration between myself and a long-time Lunger Alex Cottone. It is a short film exploring the ideas of covering, wrapping, and crumbing. I didn't want to be too deep or profound with this I simply wanted to give the viewer a chance to see movement that is structural and not necessarily emotive. I find it interesting that there is still emotional content even though the directives during creation had only structural and time-based information.

We started with Alex creating 8 structures, we then had him create transitions between structures that I randomly called out. From here we started playing with different insertions in the phrase like adding pivot points, dramatic directional shifts, and repeats. At this point, I had Alex insert a phrase I had created into his phrase in various places. Once the phrase was developed we started to "crumble" certain shapes and add in moments of suspended time. After all of these phases were complete his material was locked in and it was time to shoot. We spent a total of 5 hours to develop material.

The next day we rented a studio, developed the idea of the space, created the space and shot the footage in only 2 hours. With the help of Ashley Robicheaux and Ross Katen, we were able to do this all fairly quickly. We played with Alex's material and shot it from different angles and then started to play with he plastic a bit with some ideas of wrapping and covering almost to a suffocating point. The trickiest part was finding lighting that would still show the shapes we wanted to see but also be dark and heavy enough to achieve the look we wanted.

Overall, I''m very satisfied with the ease and speed of this project. Can't wait for Project2! 01.14.13.

Billy Bell | Artistic Director