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

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!

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)