Dance interrogations

A site-specific solo dance work created and performed by Dianne Reid. The work interacts directly with the audience who must move in and around the dance action in intimate and non-traditional performance locations. The dancer creates the performance in real-time, improvising her movement and text in response to the location and the particular audience members she encounters there. The work also incorporates projected video imagery using the skin as projection screen, and a unique soundscape is created for each performance drawn from the music and effects library of SA composer Stuart Day.

Dance interrogations

A performed conference presentation incorporating dance, video projection and spoken word.

Modeling and Annotating the Expressive Semantics of Dance Videos

Dance videos are interesting and semantics-intensive. At the same time, they are the complex type of videos compared to all other types such as sports, news and movie videos. In fact, dance video is the one which is less explored by the researchers across the globe. Dance videos exhibit rich semantics such as macro features and micro features and can be classified into several types. Hence, the conceptual modeling of the expressive semantics of the dance videos is very crucial and complex. This paper presents a generic Dance Video Semantics Model (DVSM) in order to represent the semantics of the dance videos at different granularity levels, identified by the components of the accompanying song. This model incorporates both syntactic and semantic features of the videos and introduces a new entity type called, Agent, to specify the micro features of the dance videos. The instantiations of the model are expressed as graphs. The model is implemented as a tool using J2SE and JMF to annotate the macro and micro features of the dance videos. Finally examples and evaluation results are provided to depict the effectiveness of the proposed dance video model.

Social turkey

Social Turkey is a short digital dance video developed over a series of weekly meetings with a group of sprightly and defiant sixty-plus year olds resident in Limerick. Very early in the process artist Ciara Finnegan and choreographer Jenny Roche found each individual expressing a wonderful enthusiasm for dance, an eagerness to perform and a healthy refusal to conform to stereotypes of aging. Finnegan was keen that this project should support an exchange of ideas rather than employ a top-down directorial structure. While Roche devised the fundamentals of the dance and Finnegan manned the camera, each participant contributed thereafter - improvising on a step sequence and collaborating on patterns that ultimately determined much of the look of the result. The work seeks to amplify the represented interests of a wider community while celebrating the vivacity of the particular group and the sheer fun of the collaboration.

A glossary of bodily responses

A collaborative video with Avril Huddy where two viewpoints, performer and documenter, were presented simultaneously to investigate Arakawa and Gin’s notion of “boundary-swaying”. In this performance-work, the performer influences what the camera is able to capture by engaging the documenter in a form of improvised dance. The performer’s movements appear impulsive and unpredictable, testing ways for the documenter to frame the performer’s movement. The images revealed by the documenter’s camera reflect a complexity of moments and co-incidences, evoking a sense of the performer’s embodied thinking within improvised movement. While a second camera uses a conventional wide angle shot to document the unfolding of the performance-work and track the connection between the documenter and the performer. While the performance-work itself is still highly-experimental, the ideas underpinning this exploration suggest how future investigations integrating more sensitive technology such as motion capture and tracking devises may be investigated. This performance-work formed part of the Creative Response Exhibition curated by Alan Prohm, Bill Lavender and Jason Nelson and a peer-review committee as part of the proceedings of the AG3 Online: Third International Arakawa and Gins Architecture and Philosophy Conference, hosted by the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas at Griffith University.

She sleeps

A short dance film screened at the ADF Dancing for the Camera Festival, Durham, NC, 2009.

she sleeps (2009) 3:47
Performed by Jaye Hayes
Camera, editing and sound: Dianne Reid
Created as part of an installation, Yours Truly, a City of Darebin artist-in-residence project for the Art of Difference Festival, Melbourne, 2009. This project examined the public perceptions of difference while exploring the intimate interior lives of five local disabled dancers working in collaboration with director Katrina Rank and filmmaker Dianne Reid. In "she sleeps" performer Jaye Hayes is a dancer navigating chronic illness (CFS).

Neglect

A short dance film screened at the ADF Dancing for the Camera Festival, Durham, NC, 2004.

Neglect (2003) 6 min
Performed by Chay Baker, Sheridan Lang, Emma Wilson
Direction, camera and editing by Dianne Reid
Soundscape by Mark Lang
Set in a circa 1963 apartment building in the heart of Melbourne's jewish quarter, Neglect chases clues of the hidden lives of three women. an eerie journey through corridors and stairwells, the building becomes a metaphor for the body as the location upon which emotional battles are played out and histories are inscribed.

A beautiful day

Short film screening.

Hipsync screendance collection 1993–2012

An exhibition on 3 screens of 26 screendance works created by Dianne Reid between 1993-2012. Two paintings by visual artist/dancer Melinda Smithwere also hung in the gallery space with the screen works.

Red rattler

A short dance film created and performed by Dianne Reid in response to the red train site and the 2013 performance season of Dance Interrogations in the red train.

Self and peer review in dance classes using personal video feedback

Many forms of formative feedback are used in dance training to refine the dancer’s spatial and kinaesthetic awareness in order that the dancer’s sensorimotor intentions and observable danced outcomes might converge. This paper documents the use of smartphones to record and playback movement sequences in ballet and contemporary technique classes. Peers in pairs took turns filming one another and then analysing the playback. This provided immediate visual feedback of the movement sequence as performed by each dancer. This immediacy facilitated the dancer’s capacity to associate what they felt as they were dancing with what they looked like during the dance. The often-dissonant realities of self-perception and perception by others were thus guided towards harmony, generating improved performance and knowledge relating to dance technique. An approach is offered for potential development of peer review activities to support summative progressive assessment in dance technique training.