Premiere: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, at Laban Graduate Showcase 1, LABAN, London.
Choreography: Kathleya Afanador
Music and programming: Allen Fogelsanger
Video, lighting, & costumes: Stephanie Canna
Dancers: Kathleya Afanador, Hannah Lockyer, Chiara Montalbani
Broken Chase is a collaborative design of collisions between physical and virtual events mediated by movement, recorded video, recorded sound, and live interactive sound. It is the result of a collaboration between Armadillo Dance Project and scenographer Stephanie Canna; and it is driven by our respective dovetailing interests in generative processes, architecture, and computer-interactive performance.
Taking a broad approach to the concept of interaction, Broken Chase revolves around the physical relationships between dancers and environments, as well as the virtual relationships between performers and media. Through a series of solos, duets, and a single trio, dancers drift in and out of accord with each other and with the music. They are at times obscured and at other times revealed by intermittent video projections on the transparent gauze downstage. The video projections consist of water splashes created by recording dancers in a public fountain. The physical bodies that generated the splashes have been digitally removed, leaving only visual traces and reactions that merely suggest and imply the actions that caused them. The music score includes digitally processed water sounds, a percussion track, and a computer-controlled virtual piano. In portions of the piece, the computer reacts to and/or interacts with the dancers in a semi-improvisational format.
