Animated Kolam Patterns

The brief for the creative work was to produce a digital backdrop that would be projected behind and enhance a dance performance. The animation needed to display a static kolam pattern that would then dissolve at a choreographed point in the performance. The dissolving mimics the fragmentation that occurs to physical kolam patterns throughout the day as people interact with the drawings. The final animated work was incorporated into Vanessa Mafe-Keane’s performance titled “Paired Back” performed at the Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane 2013 as part of “Dance. Indie Dance. Through the use of motion capture technology the process of dissolving the pattern is a direct result of the performer’s movements allowing visual and temporal connection between motion of performer and digital graphic to be observed. This creative work presented an opportunity to expand upon experiments conducted in the production of experimental visual forms undertaken at QUT using the Xsens MVN Inertial Motion Capture System. The project took on the form of an investigation into practice with a focus on the additional complexities of capturing, then applying multiple data sources into the production of animated visuals along with bringing to light the considerations taken into account when producing this type of generative art work for live performance. The reported outcomes from this investigation have contributed to a larger study on the use of motion capture in the generative arts, furthering the understanding of and generating theories on practice.

Skating on Olympic ice: working with winter Olympians

Working as a sport psychologist with Olympic athletes requires a clear understanding of a broad range of multifaceted individual, group, situational, and environmental issues, all of which have the ability to impact upon performance. This article provides an overview of some of the common yet vital issues that have been observed to arise when working with Olympic Winter Games athletes and teams; what to expect, how to recognise them when they occur, and why they are important to prepare for in the context of supporting athletes to achieve the best performance they can at an Olympic Games. Aimed at the emerging sport psychology practitioner, discussion of issues such as performing under pressure, dealing with distractions, adjusting to external factors, team culture, and servicing models creates an informal set of “practical guidelines” based upon real-world experiences that can also be applied to other major sporting competitions.

Body and forgetting

Body and Forgetting is a powerful dance performance that brings together the work of choreographer Liz Roche and film maker Alan Gilsenan, with a live score by Denis Roche. Inspired by the writings of Milan Kundera, Liz Roche Company's remarkable dancers find their way through delicately woven circumstances of disappearance, loss, relationship and hope. Their attempts to hold fast to memories and objects of meaning is at the heart of this work. The live performers move in dialogue with filmed versions of their dancing selves. They re-write their histories, make better endings to their stories, say what they regret not having said. These filmed reflections or versions of themselves, by offering a mirror, ultimately bring the performers back to themselves, richer from the experience.

Exposition

During the course of study in semester 1, the first year BFA Dance (Performance) students were exposed to various dance genres (in terms of technical training) and associated practices. They were required to gain physical fitness and increase technical accomplishment, strength, flexibility and stylistic versatility through their training. The students also experienced dancing as soloists, with partners and in larger group scenarios. Exposition presents these elements experienced, through a pure dance work. Movement vocabulary was formed employing several methods: specifically choreographed for the individual student; through task-based instruction, which the students constructed; and from learning pre-existing material. Thom Willems dramatic and layered musical score informed the construction of new movement vocabulary; the development of pre-existing material; and the structure of the work.

Macrophonics II

Macrophonics II presents new Australian work emerging from the leading edge of performance interface research. The program addresses the emerging dialogue between traditional media and emerging digital media, as well as dialogues across a broad range of musical traditions. Recent technological developments are causing a complete reevaluation of the relationships between media and genres in art, and Macrophonics II presents a cross-section of responses to this situation. Works in the program foreground an approach to performance that integrates sensors with novel performance control devices, and/or examine how machines can be made musical in performance. The program presents works by Australian artists Donna Hewitt, Julian Knowles and Wade Marynowsky, with choreography by Avril Huddy and dance performance by Lizzie and Zaimon Vilmanis. From sensor-based microphones and guitars, through performance a/v, to post-rock dronescapes, movement inspired works and experimental electronica, Macrophonics II provides a broad and engaging survey of new performance approaches in mediatised environments. Initial R&D for the work was supported by a range of institutions internationally, including the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, STEIM (Holland) and the Nes Artist Residency (Iceland).

Chroma Key Theatre : an examination of similarities and divergences in the use of Green Screen in two experimental theatre works

This paper examines the frame as it contributes to the debate on contemporary intermedial theatre and performance practices in light of increasing astriction between filmic and theatrical discourses. Informed by Auslander (1999), Lehmann (2006), and Giesekam (2007), and through an extrapolation of the tenets Eckersall, Gretchen and Scheer identify in the theory of New Media Dramaturgy, it will analyse two recent works of experimental theatre-making. RUFF (2013), a New York produced solo performance by one of the world’s leading female performers, explores her experiences of having a stroke. Total Dik! (2013), produced in Brisbane, Australia, is an interdisciplinary collaborative performance that examines aspects of dictatorship. They are clearly very different works yet there are a number of significant theatrical similarities in their use of Chroma Key technology and live compositing as material scenic devices. These works overtly and evocatively draw on the cinematic technique and technology of Chroma Key to augment and reveal the tensions and overlaps in their production processes.

Experience has no shadow : Bell tower III

I created Experience Has No Shadow (2010) following a successful Ausdance Qld choreographic grant in 2010, which comprised of two solos and a video-dance at the Performance Space at the Judith Wright Centre. The aim of the Bell Tower III residency was to research and construct a Stage One Development that explored choreographic approaches to oral histories. Like many first generation Australians, oral histories are the way memories and experiences of distant homelands often offer the only connection to cultural origins. Consequently, I drew on auto-ethnographic references in the form of family stories – specifically those of my mother’s family - told and retold by my mother and her family as East German refugees during World War II. While working on the video, I explored a way to make a direct connection to the past stories by using a recording of my mother’s voice. She is re-telling a favourite story about Salamo the circus horse that was sold to my great grandfather as a work horse. Rather than representing the text literally, I attempted to capture the intensity of the storytelling which accompanied abstract footage of Avril Huddy filmed through perspex glass producing animal-like shapes that continually blur and morph in and out of focus. Strangely, by tying the story in with the filmed images a whole new story seems to emerge. Two distinct solos were created in collaboration with the performers, Expressions Dance Company’s Elise May and QUT’s Avril Huddy. These were performed at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts, Performance Space, 1st April, 2010. The simplicity of its design became a key concept behind the work in terms of sets, spacing requirements, and costumes – almost minimalist. The choreographic process was conceived as highly collaborative, with commissioned music (and eventually lighting features) to act as equal partners in the performance.

Out of the Box Festival for 3 to 8 year olds (Artistic Director)

The Out of the Box Festival was founded in 1994 by the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and has been held biannually ever since both within and around the centre in what is now known as the Cultural Precinct at Southbank. It is unique in Australia in that it caters entirely to children aged 8 years and under, with a highly curated program of ticketed performance events, workshops and free arts-based events. It is attended by school and kindergarten groups and by families, and besides engaging children in high quality arts experiences, the festival is also a platform for advocating the developmental and educational benefits of the arts for children. Dr Mark Radvan was the artistic director of the 2008 festival, with responsibility for developing the curatorial direction of each festival, for creating and programming its events, and for working with festival partners The Queensland Art Gallery, The Queensland Museum, The State Library of Queensland and The Queensland Theatre Company. Radvan designed selected and commissioned works to demonstrate how the arts create memorable, celebratory and immersive experiences that stimulate children’s imagination, their curiosity and confidence about the material world and the cultures of its people. A core event was an outdoor music and dance performance space featuring entirely Indigenous performers that was not only the beating heart of the festival, but served to underlie the importance of mainstreaming awareness of our first peoples in the increasingly culturally diverse communities of children attending.

Trailing Touch

Trailing Touch (2014) is a twenty minute classically-based dance work set to music by composers Carter Burwell and Hildur Gudnadottir. It is an abstract work that explores images based on imperfect patterns and seeks to transmit the sensations felt when clusters form and disperse through the space or crisscross to create swirling wave-like reactions in the dancers’ tulle skirts. These simple references are inspired by the lyrical use of arms found in ballet, particular to the ballet aesthetic. Trailing Touch was created in collaboration with QUT’s third-year BFA (Dance Performance) students and performed as part of Dance14 at QUT’s Gardens Points Theatre from the 4th to 8th November 2014 and was performed in Singapore as part of Contact Contemporary Dance Festival on 30th November, 2014. Additionally, the creative process of Trailing Touch (2014) forms the initial project of Phase III of my PhD research, Writing the Dance Score in the Twenty-first Century: An approach for the Independent Choreographer. This PhD research will examine the potential of dance scores as a suite of choreographic strategies to map key aspects of the choreographic process. While a certain degree of ambiguity drives the creative process, the suite of choreographic strategies attempt to capture what is transmitted through the lived experience of dance. “[T]hese documents harbor a force of expression, a visual energy related to the body and the movement” (Louppe 1994, 7) that triggers movement responses, unforeseen intensities and enables personal interpretation. Consequently, Phase III will test and evaluate the relevance of Phase II research within the pressures of mainstream dance rehearsal and performance contexts. In Project One Trailing Touch this was demonstrated in the dance scores produced by the choreographer and interpreted by the dancers within the performance. By drawing from both the theoretical and practical, it is anticipated that this research will suggest a form of languaging movement that is not reliant on images or numbers, but generated in response to the intuitive and complex process underpinning choreographic practice. Rather than constructing a codified dance notation system, it will focus on strategies that reveal movement, its spatial patterns, qualities and intensities of expression and the procedures underlying key choreographic concepts. The outcome of this research project aims to support the independent choreographer in two major areas, by facilitating and enriching the choreographic process for both the performers and choreographer, and by strengthening artistic development and performance outcomes.

Shifting intimacies

Our world is literally and figuratively turning to ‘dust’. This work acknowledges decay and renewal and the transitional, cyclical natures of interrelated ecologies. It also suggests advanced levels of degradation potentially beyond reparation. Dust exists both on and beneath the border of our unaided vision. Dust particles are predominantly forms of disintegrating solids that often become the substance or catalyst of future forms. Like many tiny forms, dust is an often unnoticed residue with ‘planet-size consequences’. (Hanna Holmes 2001) The image depicts an ethereal, backlit body, continually circling and morphing, apparently floating, suggesting endless cycles of birth, life and death and inviting differing states of meditation, exploration, stillness and play. This never ending video work is taken from a large-scale interactive/media artwork created during a six-month research residency in England at the Institute of Contemporary Art London and at Vincent Dance Theatre Sheffield in 2006. It was originally presented on a raised floor screen made of pure white sand at the ICA in London (see). The project involved developing new interaction, engagement and image making strategies for media arts practice, drawing on the application of both kinetic and proprioceptive dance/performance knowledges. The work was further informed by ecological network theory that assesses the systemic implications of private and public actions within bounded systems. The creative methodology was primarily practice-led which fomented the particular qualities of imagery, generated through cross-fertilising embodied knowledge of Dance and Media Arts. This was achieved through extensive workshopping undertaken in theatres, working ‘on the floor’ live, with dancers, props, sound and projection. And eventually of course, all this dust must settle. (Holmes 2001, from Dust Jacket) Holmes, H. 2001, The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things, p.3

Inertial motion capture and live performance (with a focus on dance)

3D Motion capture is a fast evolving field and recent inertial technology may expand the artistic possibilities for its use in live performance. Inertial motion capture has three attributes that make it suitable for use with live performance; it is portable, easy to use and can operate in real-time. Using four projects, this paper discusses the suitability of inertial motion capture to live performance with a particular emphasis on dance. Dance is an artistic application of human movement and motion capture is the means to record human movement as digital data. As such, dance is clearly a field in which the use of real-time motion capture is likely to become more common, particularly as projected visual effects including real-time video are already often used in dance performances. Understandably, animation generated in real-time using motion capture is not as extensive or as clean as the highly mediated animation used in movies and games, but the quality is still impressive and the ‘liveness’ of the animation has compensating features that offer new ways of communicating with an audience.

Note sequence morphing algorithms for performance of electronic dance music

This paper describes algorithms that can musically augment the realtime performance of electronic dance music by generating new musical material by morphing. Note sequence morphing involves the algorithmic generation of music that smoothly transitions between two existing musical segments. The potential of musical morphing in electronic dance music is outlined and previous research is summarised; including discussions of relevant music theoretic and algorithmic concepts. An outline and explanation is provided of a novel Markov morphing process that uses similarity measures to construct transition matrices. The paper reports on a ‘focus-concert’ study used to evaluate this morphing algorithm and to compare its output with performances from a professional DJ. Discussions of this trial include reflections on some of the aesthetic characteristics of note sequence morphing. The research suggests that the proposed morphing technique could be effectively used in some electronic dance music contexts.

Learnings from the implementation of performance psychology as a subject within a university dance program

Similar to the focus on training in the technical, physical and artistic areas of dance, dance professionals, students and educators alike appear to be developing an increased awareness of how important training in psychology is to their success within dance. Over the past 4 years, lectures in performance psychology have been incorporated as part of a compulsory professional skills subject for second and third year students within a University dance program. The following presentation aims to share practitioner experience and learnings regarding the implementation of this subject within this context, its perceived effectiveness, and recommendations for future use.

Performance enhancement: A whole of person approach to first year dance students’ transition into tertiary training

The transition into university presents very particular challenges for students. The First Year Experience (FYE) is a transitional liminal phase, fraught with uncertainty, ripe with potential. The complexity inherent in this initial phase of tertiary education is well documented and continues to be interrogated. Providing timely and effective support and interventions for potentially at-risk first year students as they transition into tertiary study is a key priority for universities across the globe (Gale et al., 2015). This article outlines the evolution of an established and highly successful Transitional Training Program (TTP) for first year tertiary dance students, with particular reference to the 2015 iteration of the program. TTP design embraces three dimensions: physical training in transition, learning in transition, and teaching for transition, with an emphasis on developing and encouraging a mindset that enables information to be transferred into alternative settings for practice and learning throughout life. The aim of the 2015 TTP was to drive substantial change in first year Dance students’ satisfaction, connectedness, and overall performance within the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Dance course, through the development and delivery of innovative curriculum and pedagogical practices that promote the successful transition of dance students into their first year of university. The program targeted first year BFA Dance students through the integration of specific career guidance; performance psychology; academic skills support; practical dance skills support; and specialized curricula and pedagogy.