Project7: Dust

Subject: Joey Arrigo

Project7 Time: 3.5hrs

Project52 Time: 41hrs

This project turned out to be one of my favorites. I feel like I end up saying that every week, but it's true! They just keep getting better and better! I was worried at first with this one because I didn't have a lot of time to commit to it. I decided to step away from the idea of complex project and just really show the body, much like Project1. And boy did I pick the right body!

Joey Arrigo has been a friend of mine for a while and we were working together this past weekend when I had the idea to use him as the subject for Project7. I rented a studio for two hours on Sunday night and we got to work! I decided to paint Joey's arms and chest in a white dust-like make-up I felt like I wanted to give him an other-worldly physical quality to match his unique movement. I also enjoy the dust created a tired look. I gave Joey some improv ideas based on the image of clouds of dust and small explosions of dust and I got the exact movement I wanted. Overall, we set-up, lit, painted, shot all the footage we needed, and cleaned up in two hours.

Editing this one was pretty difficult, mainly because I had so many beautiful shots I wanted to use but my track was only around 4.5 mins. I wanted it to feel very intimate as well (my favorite moment in the film is at 1:15, and pictured to the left) so I wanted to make sure I included a lot of close-to-body shots to see the intricacies of hist muscles, the dust, and the undulation of his spine. It took me around one and a half hours to edit this bad boy (the film). 

I hope you enjoy! As always let me know your thoughts!

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project6: Element

Subject: Skylar Boykin

Project6 Time: 6.5hrs

Project52 Time: 37.5hrs

I wanted Project6 to be special because I was on tour with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet this past weekend in Dallas, TX. I'm a huge fan of the dance training in Texas especially from a studio called Dance Industry in Plano. I wanted to take advantage of the local resources so I called up Skylar Boykin. She's a really kickass girl who dances with such grace and beastliness simultaneously, that I couldn't resist. 

We decided to shoot outside of the theater the Cedar Lake was performing at, the AT&T Performing Arts Center. It has a really wonderful sleek modern park out front and was calling my name since the day we had arrived. There was a great grass area with a stunningly crafted arts building behind it, resembling a sort of iron-work forest, some long stone bench areas, and the best part... a reflecting pool! As we shot, I felt a little elemental theme going on, which is how I ended up with the title. 

I gave Skylar different very basic tasks per set; a line oriented task for the grass, a falling concept for the  stone, and a circular idea for the water. I tried to direct her on how each element would function kinesthetically. She provided me with way more than I could've hoped. I found myself literally laughing with excitement at points while I was editing. We filmed everything in 2hrs.

***UNRELATED FUNNY SIDE STORY***

We soon realized that we were indeed in the south, as we shot the scenes on the stone. Here we were minding our own business, creating a nice little artsy film when out of no where a representative from the theater comes up. As I've said before not all the places I shoot necessarily give us permission to shoot so we just sort of do it and deal with the situation if it arises. (Art takes no prisoners!!!) I feel her disapproval and turn to take my scolding. I received just that, but not for what I thought. The little lady, in her finest southern accent say, "I hope you know, this is a real family-friendly kinda place here. We don't really find some of the positions she's in very appropriate." Dance? You don't find dance positions appropriate? At a performing arts complex?!? "I would appreciate it if y'all could just tone it down." I politely agreed and she went on her way. For the remainder of the shoot she stood inside the glass lobby of the theater and watched our every move. Praying that the wind would pick up just right and blow Skylar's dress up so she could throw her disapproval stamp right onto our faces. 

***END OF UNRELATED FUNNY SIDE STORY***

I edited this one on the flight home to NYC which is why it took so long. Final Cut Pro doesn't really get along with my MacBook Pro. I had fun with this one since there were so many different looks to edit in. I decided to be a bit more musical than usual with this one and I really enjoy how it turned out. It took around 4.5hrs to edit this badboy.

Hope you like it!

Project5: Vaporize

Subject: McKenna Birmingham

Project5 Time: 8hrs

Project52 Time: 31hrs

Ok... I know... this is late. I've addressed it and now we can move forward. I'm realizing that as my year goes on and my schedule fills up that Project52 isn't the easiest task. Surprisingly it's not the filming and editing that is hard to find time for. It's the consistently updating and promoting the project that gets pushed under the table. But I'm doing it now to catch up! So here it is:

This is one of my favorite projects to date. I decided to shoot my former-roommate, Juilliard classmate, and long time friend, McKenna Birmingham. She's a really wonderful mover and has such an eye for film. She helped me a lot, not only by dancing, but also with ideas of different angles to shoot from and ways to pull off some of the "magic" with the balloons. So this is a HUGE "Thank You, McKenna!"

I had wanted to do this idea of the balloons leading someone around for a while and finally felt it was the right time and place to do it. I had a vision of someone leaving this life, but not necessarily in a morbid, sad, woe-is-me, dramatic way. I felt like the balloons allow the viewer to instantly associate the film with a happy or nostalgic thought, so what better than to use it as a guide to a more serious inevitable event? I didn't want to give death, in this case, a negative connotation so I tried to make it a more surreal, or even spiritual occurrence in this subject's life. 

I let McKenna be pretty free with the movement and asked her to just move where the balloons took her. We had many shots that didn't end up in the Project because the balloons would get so tangled from the wind that I would have to jump in the frame to save McKenna from being strangled. I think she and I both found it much more difficult to film than we had anticipated. Overall, it took us around 4.5hrs to shoot the entire film.

Editing this one was fairly easy since there was a clear narrative for me to work with. I really had no challenges with this one, other than to figure out what music I wanted to pair it with. I took me around 3.5hrs, some Indian food, and two glasses of Whiskey to edit Project5! ;)

Enjoy!

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!

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

From a Lunger: Daniel Howerton

Lunge Dance Collective on a farm??(awkward pause) 
It’s been an interesting process for me so far. First of all living in the middle of no where on a farm for two weeks is a process in itself, removing yourself from the crazy energy of New York is both peaceful and gives me a slight squirmish feeling. I think it’s helping me focus on what’s before us.... because what’s before us is a lot of work in a short amount of time. It’s a lot of character development which I was not expecting to be honest. I didn’t really have a clear view of what we were going to create here. I feel like as a person I can be quite animated but when asked to “act” I tend to shut myself in, but there is something about this process that’s different for me. As a kid I was in love with Charlie Chaplin and how his animation could come across so clearly without words. I am actually very excited to get into the development of whatever character I may be, we are only 5 days in so I can’t say I have a clear view of that character yet, but a goal of mine throughout the process is going to be to try to not think of it so much as acting but to really become whatever character I find within the work, to see if my personal animation and craziness can carry over into this character so that it’s just a physical expression of the many sides of myself. 


~Daniel

About Daniel

Daniel was born and raised in Nevada City, California. He began dancing at age 12 where he received most of his training from his public high school's dance department. After graduating from high school, Daniel continued his training in San Francisco at Alonzo King's Lines Ballet Repertory Ensemble Program. After completing their two year program Daniel went onto dance with many bay area companies which include Yannis Adoniou’s Kunst-Stoff, Kara Davis’s Project Agora and San Francisco Opera, he has also had the pleasure of working with many other opera companies throughout California and Seattle. Sense relocating to New York Daniel has had the pleasure of working with Shen Wei Dance Arts and Sidra Bell New York. Also he is the recipient of an Isadora Ducun Award in Outstanding Achievement in Performance. 

See Daniel in Lunge Dance Collective's "You'll Never Be Alone" and get tickets 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.

New Dance, New Dancers.

The New Creation Has Begun!

Finally! We've started to choreograph the 2012 New Creation! Today we began rehearsals for the Lunge Dance Collective residency with Michigan State University where we will be presenting a work from our repertory, "Prowl", as well as a sneak preview of a work in progress version of the 2012 New Creation. Even more excitingly we have two guest artists collaborating with us for this residency- Jessie Hartley and Makenzie Dustman. I look forward to working with these two very talented artists on this project along with Lunge Dance Collective member Conner Bormann. Stay tuned for some rehearsal videos and more behind the scenes action as the 2012 New Creation comes to life! And remember, you'll never be alone. ;)

Makenzie Dustman

Makenzie Dustman began dancing at the age of 2 and has trained in ballet, pointe, contemporary, jazz, lyrical, musical theater and hip hop.  She began performing professionally on stage at age 5, where she was a featured dancer and singer with a touring performing arts jazz and holiday vocal group.  She began dancing competitively at age 8 and has won numerous top score awards and national championships and scholarships. She is currently in her second year as a company dancer with Westside Dance Project and in her first year with POV Dance Company.  Makenzie is also an actress and is represented by Lewis & Beal Talent Agency (Theatrical) and Bloc (Commercial, Dance). She has a lead role in a current national PSA commercial, models professionally and is the face of Urban Dancewear.  In addition, Makenzie is also a high school Dance Team Choreographer, dance assistant to professional choreographers, and is a dance teacher. 

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Jessie Hartley

Jessie Hartley founded WESTSIDE Dance Project in 2009. WESTSIDE performs at professional level concert and festivals throughout the year, and works with choreographers such as Peter Chu, Justin Giles, Mike Esperanza, Sonya Tayeh, Billy Bell, Will Johnston, and many others. Jessie Hartley trained with Alicia Head, Paula Morgan, Reid Olson, Stanley Holden and across the U.S. and Europe. Commercially she has worked for Disney, Nickelodeon, MTV, and Sony. She assisted Sonya Tayeh for everything from SYTYCD to international workshops from 2006-2010 and was an active member of Tayeh Dance. Jessie also danced in companies for Billy Bell, Peter Chu, Dee Caspary, Liz Imperio, Donna Sternberg, and Helen Blackburn at the Professional Project or Springboard Montreal. Jessie was a member of BARE Dance Comapny directed by Mike Esperanza from 2006-2009. Jessie teaches Contemporary/Ballet for Ihollywood Dance, and various conventions, workshops, and intensives, including her own workshops in Italy, Sweden, and England.

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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