| | Posted by Tony Schultz

This is the latest experiment in my Dance and Technology class at Sarah Lawrence College. We networked 4 computers to record synchronously and set them along the cardinal points of my favorite studio, the “Small Studio”. Each student recorded a solo. Next we reconstructed the 4 views using OpenGL video planes and effectively rebuilt the structure of the studio with the dancer’s image projected on the walls. Students are now writing scores to choreograph cinematic movement around their virtual architecture.

In class discussion, this project has raised so many questions about dancing, viewing and the staging of the two. I think back to Kate’s post on seeing Merce Cunningham’s ‘Ocean’ at the Roundhouse in Camden.
She wrote, “Ocean was performed on a round stage. Arriving at the Roundhouse felt like going to the circus. The audience sat all the way around the stage, and the 150-piece conductorless orchestra sat behind the audience all around the amphitheatre. It was very odd.”

The physical structure of a stage changes the the way the dancing is seen and performed by the way it shapes the surface between spaces of performer and viewer. In the same way, cameras and the reconstruction of their images mediate the relationship between performer and viewer. Visible Cities demonstrated that mediating the interaction between dancer and viewer through architecture involves the assembly of both real and virtual structures.

I hope to develop this technology and line of thinking more in the future. Let me know what you think.