Project8: Dust (Reprise For Woman)

Subject: Colette Nguyen

Project8 Time: 7hrs

Project52 Time: 48hrs

So I fell in love with last weeks Project but I felt like the topic of dust wasn't fully explored. I asked myself, "What was left untapped?", and I realized it was the object of femininity. I needed a woman! I felt like there was a delicate sensuality that I wanted to capture that I could only get with a girl. So I had this inner turmoil of "Should I revisit the concept?" vs. "Hell no, Billy! Do something new every time!"Eventually I realized that by revisiting the concept with a woman it would be something different. It would be a beautiful exploration of liberty that I just couldn't resist. 

I always get what I want, naturally, so I called Colette and told her to meet me for a shoot! First we took extra care and completely lined our space with painters plastic to be really careful not to make a mess. (Forewarning: We did.) We were aproaching the dust a little differently this round and using baby powder... a lot of baby powder. Like the we-can-powder-all-the-baby-booties-in-China amount of baby powder. So once the space was "secure" we jumped right in. Colette was a real sport since basically she was breathing and eating baby powder over the course of three hours. Once we played with enough ideas of covering her in the dust we decided to clean up. 

I came prepared and armed myself with some cleaning materials. I thought it was only fitting to bring baby wipes... So we rolled up all the plastic and it actually did a pretty good job! Once we cleaned up the three or four spots of powder that got through the plastic we decided to pack up. As we turned around we realized everything behind us was covered in baby powder residue. (I really like the word residue) Basically we spent the last 30 min of our shoot on hands and knees scrubbing everything in the studio with baby wipes... It's not a fun process. Overall, set-up, shoot, and clean-up took 3 hrs. 

I really took a while editing this one. It took me about 4 hrs overall. I wanted it to be breathtaking but hopeful. The hardest part was choosing which clips to use because I really fell in love with all of the footage. It needed nothing. No reverse, no color correction, I loved it just as it was. Once I compiled all the clips I wanted I rearranged them to see how I wanted to present the work. I liked the song I was using but I felt like there was something missing. Hope. It was missing that hopefulness that I so badly wanted. I decided to edit in one of my favorite speech's of all time. Charlie Chaplin's final speech in "The Great Dictator". It was exactly what I wanted. It fit the description of the work perfectly. It spreads unity, and joy. It does everything I wish for my work choreographically, visually, and emotively to do.

I love this one. I hope you do too.