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