The Photographer

Nir Arieli was born in Israel and now is based in New York, NY. With a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and a background as a photographer for the Israeli military, he is now a portrait artist working closely with dancers. Nir is an admirer of beauty and gentleness, these qualities are the heart of his work. Visit Nir's website here!

The Photo Shoot

We wanted to shoot the promotional material for "You'll Never Be Alone" in a way that was fitting for the show. This proved to be a challenge since the dance is not choreographed, the set is not built, the costumes are not made, and the story is not clear yet. So what do we have to work with? A time. Since we know "You'll Never Be Alone" is an ode to the destruction of silent film we have a clear time period that we are working in. With a time comes a fashion and with a fashion comes a personality.

For the shoot itself we worked on the idea of, what we coined, "one liners".

One liner- Noun: A catchphrase or quick exclamatory thought that derives a clear emotion, action, or intention. For instance: 

                     "Oh, hey there!"        "I've got it!"      "No! Please don't!"

We would start with the initial reaction of the one liner and then intensify it until a point of sheer ridiculousness. We found that typically the ridiculous reactions were the photos that read with glamour and drama that we needed to create a silent film poster.

                           Good                       Better                         Best

We shot primarily in solos but played a bit with some group stuff playing with a three stooges idea. We noticed that in our inspiration photos (thanks to google image) typically there was a mix of emotions; One person was interested while the other was disinterested, or one person was happy and the other is terrified. 

The Photos

The goal is to create a movie poster with the idea of possibly hinting at a multiple personality disorder.

Buy tickets for the world premiere of "You'll Never Be Alone" on June 29th at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in NYC at LungeDance.com

It's a girl!

A Show Is Born!

Pop the cork and fill the glasses to the rim! We have a name for the 2012 New Creation! From this point on instead of referring to this new work as the very ominous "2012 New Creation" it will be known as it's actual name, "You'll Never Be Alone". After much deliberation I have decided to title this New Creation the same as the work it is based off of. The former "You'll Never Be Alone" was only a character study for what is to become the New Creation version of "You'll Never Be Alone", a work that is to explore the ideas of technology dissolving our relationship and the ever looming factors of temptation, all while being in the theme of silent film. The former work will now be called "A Study of Character" and will be a shortened playful version of the full work. I know it's a bit confusing, but what's art if it makes sense?!?

That's not all!

Not only is the title of the show confirmed, but so are the dates that all of you fantastic people can view it! "You'll Never Be Alone" will premier at the Ailey Citigroup Theater on June 29th at 8:30 pm. Ticket information is soon to come and will be posted everywhere including here, our Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as on our official website. I am very excited to be announcing that this isn't all we are doing! We will also be presenting an excerpt of "You'll Never Be Alone" at the Roseland Ballroom in Times Square on July 26-28 and at the Boulder Fringe Festival August 10-26. Specific show times and ticket information for all of this is to come at a later date! 

 Just as a little teaser I have put together a rather fitting preview of "You'll Never Be Alone" in it's proper style announcing the New Creations title as well as the Premier date and time. Please feel free to share!!i

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Fitted for the 40's!

Welcome to the team...

Every new work is more than just choreography, the success of the project largely depends on the coordination of all of the collaborating artists. Costuming is one of the most effective ways to transport an audience into a time period. As our entire New Creation is set in the 1930's-1940's I felt it was necessary to bring in a Costume Designer with a lot of experience in creating characters. This leads me to introducing Marion Talan! Marion is an incredible designer who I met when I attended The Juilliard School, where she currently works designing costumes for dance, opera, and theater. She has worked on many interesting projects as well as with the Merce Cunningham Company. I am very excited to be sharing this project with Marion and her amazing talents.

Playing Dress Up

One of the first steps other than fitting the dancers, was for Marion to throw some dresses on one of our dancers and discuss with me which of the cuts and shapes we like the best. We went into the Juilliard stock and played drew up for a while. Shelby was loving being put into all of the dresses. Not all of them were fit for her obviously, but we were looking still to see patterns and types of dresses. Tell us your thoughts in the comments below! Which one is your favorite? Here are the results: 

(excuse the poor picture quality from my phone)

Michigan and Gestures.

Michigan and Gestures.

As part of our residency with the Residential College of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University, Lunge Dance Collective was able to start the choreographic process for our 2012 New Creation. The New Creation is an expansion of an existing LDC work called "You'll Never Be Alone". After I created "You'll Never Be Alone", with assistant choreographer Channing Cooke,  we started to notice how similar the work was to a silent film. With such animated music and clear development of distinct characters, the dance resembled more and more the qualities of silent film.

As we started choreographing base phrases, I decided to make a set of gestures that would help us create a language and a clear way to communicate without being vocal. A technique I picked up while working with Cherice Barton, I found that it was such a great way to start developing movement with a clear character quality. I plan to take this movement and pair it with our base phrases to create a multi-deminsional type of movement. 

Here is a video of Makenzie Dustman working on our gesture work. I decided to have her do the gestures as fast as possible. I find that because the gestures are trying to communicate and are also syncopated with choreographed facial expressions and intentions, that the increased speed creates a schizophrenic type movement that I really am appealed to.

During the MSU residency we were able to create a 30 min. work in progress version of the planned 75 min. finished product. The showing of the work in progress was last thursday on April 12th at Fairchild Theater on the MSU campus. Many of the MSU students, faculty, and staff showed up to support our showing that was paired with current LDC repertory, "Prowl", and a special guest performance of local dance company Happendance run by Diane Newman. Thank you to Lauren Harris, Diane Newman, Beth Post, and all of MSU for your incredible hospitality, working environment, and passion for progressing the integration of the arts with everyday academic education. 

Stay tuned for more details on the 2012 New Creation.

~ Billy

Conner Bormann, Jessie Hartley, Billy Bell, and Makenzie Dustman during "Prowl" at the Fairchild Theater at MSU.

Commission #1

The time has come for YOU to participate and create! As part of the Lunge Dance Collective Creation Blog, I will be submitting a number of Commissions that I will need completed in order to aid in the development of Lunge's 2012 New Creation. This is the opportunity for you as an audience to help control and influence what the final product that ends up on stage will look like. Anyone can take part and reply to the Commission by simply leaving your contribution as a comment below! 

Commission #1

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So here's the challenge: I am currently seeking stock footage from any film (silent or talkies) from the 1920's to the 1950's to serve as inspiration and maybe even incorporated into the New Creation as projection. We need film and LOTS of it! 

Details: To submit please a working link to the video, the title of the film, the year the film was created, and any other information you have on the scene or clip. I am looking for EVERYTHING! Hollywood kisses, fainting, dance scenes, technicolor, cartoons, Nosferatu, fight scenes, westerns, I want it all! Don't be afraid to submit multiple clips!

PRIZES!!! Oh yes! There are prizes! My favorite video clip will receive a free Lunge Dance Collective t-shirt mailed to your front door! As well as a badass picture of some Lungers kicking butt!


So those are the guidelines, now get to searching!!! The best clip will be decided on March16th. Cant wait to see what you all come up with! If you have any questions please post as a comment and I'll respond as soon as I can! Thanks for your collaboration!


~ Billy

Launch of 2012 Sponsorship Campaign

 As we start to form this open collaborative environment that is the 2012 New Creation, we find ourselves needing what every exploration and adventure needs- funding. How do we start? Who do we ask? What do we say? All valid questions. Phase one of our Sponsorship Campaign is going to focus on targeting individuals for private and corporate sponsorships. Have someone in mind that might be interested? Send them our Sponsorship Letter and Donation Form. You can email it, print and ship it, telegraph it, or even do your interpretive dance version of it (please upload to youtube). However you feel, the one thing that must remain consistent is that we are all constantly spreading the word. The more hype and excitement that we can get over the 2012 New Creation, the more people will want to make it happen.

So what is it?

The 2012 New Creation is the future work of Lunge Dance Collective. The plan is for it to be a full evening-legnth work. It is about how development of technology's goal is to bring us closer together but it actually gives us an excuse to further isolate ourselves from one another. We plan to develop this within the theme of the destruction of the silent film era. Using a shorter work already danced by Lunge Dance Collective, the goal is to expand "You'll Never Be Alone" into a 1hr and 15min piece that functions as a silent film itself. I'm fascinated by the over exaggeration of character and gesture within silent film and find it an interesting contrast with our innate response to communication. Playing with concepts of dissolving movement in and out of ridiculousness, the 2012 New Creation's goal is to leave the audience feeling void of character and in want of more, with an echoing reminder that You'll Never Be Alone...

...Here On Earth.

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