Opening night - the dance, music, and film collaborations.........

The Recital Programme:

A Manner of Thinking:

Elise's dance performance begins the evenings recital with an introduction from Dance tutor Kate Monson. 
James' photographic montage film throws evocative landscape imagery and rippling light on her performance whilst Daniel's audio recordings add a further layer of sound imagery.

Y Step:

We all move out to the main foyer to the area where Stephani has chosen to perform a site specific dance.
She uses the closed off area behind the glass doors as a kind of captive's cage and we are prompted to consider human incarceration behind social or self imposed barriers.  It is a powerful and moving performance. 

Time Erosion:

Kate introduces her own choreographed piece about the effect of time and natural processes on the landscape. The two dancers,  Elise and Nicole are accompanied by the improvised sounds produced by Daniel, Nate and Stuart. This work also includes the spoken word which Nicole delivers with energy and passion through out the performance, it is a statistical mantra of the losses and changes suffered by the land. 

(Un)Natural Sounds:

We move location to the really impressive Madsen Recital Hall and wait with great expectation.
Scott is waiting in the darkened wings off stage and a light illuminates the slightly ajar door.
 We don't see him, then he begins to play a plaintive and beguiling saxophone. It is a beautiful and reflective piece and it transports us to a place in our imaginations.

Noticing:

Nate and Jay worked together on this edited film and music piece. Jay's film was an impressionistic layered montage of the landscapes we had visited in Yellowstone and the Tetons. We watched ourselves become blended into the colour and light of these places and Nate's slow and elegiac piano music prompted the strong emotional response which had many of us brimming up. How did they do that? 

It worked extremely well.     

A Trail to Explore:

It was so good to see so many of our WMC group volunteer for this dance piece, they were more than ready for any potential embarrassment! This piece mirrored our own actions and behaviours that we had increasingly noticed in ourselves during our Yellowstone trip. It got to the point where we became highly self-conscious of our habitual responses to point and photograph, to capture and collect information.  

Nicole and Stephani's dance piece perfectly captured this and it was great to see that aspects of our performance challenge had been incorporated into the work.