“Dancing with Technology” at New York’s 92nd St. Y
Aside from a few intrepid pioneers who independently gravitated toward technology (Loïe Fuller, Alwin Nikolais, Yvonne Rainer), dancers have historically stuck to dancing. The hi-tech aspects of their productions they have outsourced to others.
But times are changing.
The carefully constructed division between dance making and dance production is going the way of the typewriter. Anyone with a digital camera, a computer, and access to the Internet can design a visual effect, a website, or launch a marketing blitz.
But there is a caveat.
Many dancers, who were born before the 1980s, have been slow to embrace the tech revolution. Computers are not central to their work. People are. Making choreography or lesson plans means working with the body, not necessarily with computer applications.
At the 92nd St. Y’s Dance Education Lab last week, dance and technology expert Doug Fox (greatdance.com) and lauded elementary school dance teacher Kathleen Isaac (http://www.dancestudiolife.com/2010/05/kids-make-dance/) led a five-day, 25-hour intensive called “Dancing with Technology.”
As I walked into Buttenweiser Hall, my tech dread momentarily subsided. The Gothic-style studio space with its hand-painted, gold leaf ceiling of Jewish symbols is historic. American dance masters José Limón, Doris Humphrey, and Martha Graham (pictured sequentially below), used the space to make important works.
On the first day, I learned about the diversity of the workshop’s 30-odd participants. The youngest is a junior in the dance department at University of Wisconsin – Madison. There are a dozen veteran public school dance teachers. Also representative were people interested in teaching dance, making dance, and marketing dance to their schools, universities, and (blogs).
On the second day of the workshop, we closed our laptops. Then Fox and Isaac asked us to focus on something more familiar: Making a mirror dance. We divided into twos and threes and tried to make an exact copy of each other’s evolving motions. (This is a great activity for kids, beginner dancers, or overly-sophisticated adults attending boring cocktail parties.) After the dance making, the class took turns filming each other’s studies with Flip cameras. Then came the harrowing part for the oldsters. Each group was encouraged to edit, add special effects, music, and titles to the film footage that we downloaded onto our laptops. My groups, all novices and deeply freaked out, decided to call ourselves “the virgin techies.” Here is our first attempt at being techies:
But these short films, made by the younger generation, are much better: