The Final Product
The Final Product
"Dance...going digital with an aqueous edge...undergoing a miraculous film-enhanced facelift, this age-old art has never looked so modern."
The Chattanooga Pulse
Photos:
1. Anemones (top left)
2. Clownfish (bottom left)
3. Vapor finale (right)
Aqueous Myth: Tales of a Water Planet is foremost an interdisciplinary, collaborative process that culminates in an original, evening-length production of dance and technology, a synthesis of media and motion that explores human experience in relation to water. Unified by a liquid theme, consecutive vignettes explore contrasting approaches to expression through the moving body partnered by illusionary projection designs in an ever-changing, mediated atmosphere of reflective surfaces. A seamless blending of production elements results in an intrinsic work of total theater that undeniably acknowledges the mentorship of Alwin Nikolais. As an innate element of the production, digital video is used as both choreographic tool and illumination of landscape and architecture, yet attention to the use of technology is minimized and emphasis is given to the fusion of elements united to create an integrated whole.
The episodic nature of the work offers the potential for involvement from a large team of creative artists. A number of choreographers will contribute movement vocabulary for the work through a number of movement translation techniques including video, dance notation, direct interaction, verbal description, and coaching through internet performance conferencing. An original sound score for the piece will be the result of a collaborative process including the talents of a number of composers, orchestrated by a sound designer.
With audience accessibility in mind, an extensive array of movement and musical genres will be interwoven into the work, engaging an expansive gamut of viewers. The all-encompassing evening of dance maintains curiosity and attentiveness through its continuum of contrasting approaches to the marriage of dance and technology. A spectrum of relationships between moving images results in wide-ranging responses, blurring perceptions of reality, leaving an audience of onlookers wide-eyed and assiduously attentive.
Narrated from an objective, futuristic point of view, Aqueous Myth abstractly encompasses a humanitarian message through the tale of a once-existent world, dependent on water. It explores, both pleasures associated with water, and the devastation of extinction due to evaporation and misuse of this valuable resource. The work addresses issues of wildlife preservation, specifically endangered aquatic species, as documentary images are interwoven into the content of the work. An underlying warning suggests the need for awareness and exposure to the currently threatened population of wild dolphins, whales, manatees, and sea turtles.
The spectacle of total theater, experienced live within the Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre on the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, is to be archived and shared live on the internet with members of Internet2, a consortium of over two-hundred universities working in partnership with industry, academia, and government.
From raindrop to the oceanic depths, Aqueous Myth is a kinetic voyage through the annals of aquatic evolution unveiled in a multifaceted composition of live, dimensional cinema. Fables of a liquid planet chronicled through the synergy of motion, set design, original surround sound score, and projected video challenge the senses to reconsider the definition of dance theater, the product of a Modernist creating in a Post Post-Modern world.