earwax magazine

Metadance in Resonant Light

Choreography by Chrissie Parrot.

Visuals by Jonathan Mustard

Music by Martijn Tellinga, Set Fire to Flames and Jonathan Mustard.

Perth International Arts FestivalPICA performance spaceFebruary 15th 2008 Creators of multi-artform works sometimes struggle with the lure and impracticalities of over-stimulation. Crowding works with one too many items of sound, light or motion could divide the audience’s attention away from critical details. It is when a construction reaches a fine balance between its elements that these works flourish, allowing each part to contribute and compliment each other. Metadance in Resonant Light provided a subtle immersion in the combination of dance, music and image that allowed the viewer to absorb the entire show rather than be commanded to follow.

Metadance is a collaboration that is primarily a dance performance featuring four dancers. They are complimented by an array of projected dancers, video and lighting effects, all arranged over 3 movements with each set to one piece of music. While the work has been previously presented as an installation, it took on a new life as a live performance in the dimly lit performance space of Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. The space had been divided into sections for this performance, with partially transparent drapes being drawn above the stage.

Jambird is a performance company that is determined to break traditions by integrating concepts and techniques from outside influences and allowing these to shape their works. This company is mainly a collaboration between Chrissie Parrot and Jonathan Mustard. Parrot is a well renowned, highly prolific, multi award winning dance choreographer and Mustard a new music composer, working with computer music, mixed media and visual arts. Together the works they create infuse dance with other forms of media, the latest focus being virtual dancers and the interaction between these and live dancers. The combination of the dancers and manipulations of space, video and light gave the overall performance an interesting shift in perception and made viewing the performance an entangling experience.

Arranged into three movements, each movement had a distinctive feel and pace, exploring a particular set of visual and musical dynamics. The first movement created a digitalized world and firmly entrenched the viewers into this space. Line after line of computer text scrolled across the stage and images of digital dancers appeared and then quickly dissapeared. This movement utilized music entitled Nodes by Dutch composer Martijn Tellinga which provided a computer generated musical setting of noise, glitches and computer fuzz. The sounds darted from speaker to speaker, rapidly changing pitch, attack, decay and volume and giving the impression of a moving and continually shifting space. The piece rose and fell in intensity as two dancers performed with digital counterparts, each copying the other - sometimes moving in sync at times and at other times in opposition. Utilizing this electronic form of composition gave a less linear form of direction for the movement, provided a sound world built upon incredible layers of sounds and added interesting spatilization effects, which could have perhaps been extended by a more numerous speaker set up.

The second movement featured two female dancers who performed with their counterparts which in this case was pre-recorded video footage of themselves projected on screens. This movement explored different combinations of real dancers and their two counterparts in various stage positions and in the case of the images, shades and reflections. The dance movements gave off a feeling of intense building frustration, leading to infuriation, the choreography lyrical and charged with emotion. The music for this section reflected this, building with intensity and layers as the dance gained momentum. A 14 minute epic by Canadian post-rock band Set Fire to Flames encompassed this movement. The piece began with sparse sounds and a single organ drone which over a significant portion of time built up to a multi layered sound mass of strings, bells, organ, percussion and static noise. The building of these layers was a gradual process of repeating short motifs over a period of time and slowly dragging in more sounds and instruments. The overall effect of the repetition and build-up proves contemplative and frustrating, melding with awkward and angered positions from the dancers. Finally, the piece comes to a climax and fades down to a string motif that is slightly microtonal, clashing dissonantly and further continuing the frustration and restless energy exhibited by the dancers and video.

The third movement presents the namesake of the work and represents the combination and complete delivery of all the aforementioned explorations and techniques. Re-arranging the stage into a maze of transparent drapes with line after line of computer code projected on it gave an eerie light to bathe the performers in. The lights shining through each drape gave a spectacular effect which was even greater when animated dancers were projected through. The sound-world was once again different, built from computer clicks and light taps to begin, it represented a more docile environment than the noisy first movement. The soundtrack by Jonathan Mustard didn’t stay static for too long and built up into a sea of sounds, drowning the audience in a flood of computer chatter. The visual aspects of this movement was once again very aesthetically pleasing as the dancers weaved around the stage in drawn-out wanderings. The only particular fault of this movement would be the startling shift to a french pop song mid movement, completely out of context to the overall concept of immersion in a digital world. This however wasn’t enough to snap the viewers out of it, and the audience took in the combination of visuals, sound and movement and applauded gratuitously.

Overall Metadance provided a great experiment in using specific elements of dance, visuals, computer generated images, light and music, managing to never overuse any particular aspect but cohesively join all together. While not all the music was original it still proved to be a powerful and evocative score that seamlessly entrenched the viewer in a particular sound world. The only faults of the piece would be the sound set up which could have proved more effective if in multi-speaker surround, or at least having the stereo set up easily audible to all members, which it often was not. If Metadance is anything to go by, Jambird will be conjuring up more dynamic multi-platform arts which are not only for those fans of dance, but the generally appreciative of well formed works.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 3:33 am and is filed under reviews : live. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.