Time Dance - an algebra of movement

TIME DANCE - an algebra of movement

Programme /1st half
Duration: 38mins
Conductor: Hamish McKeich
Musicians: Emma Sayers (pf), Megan Molina (vn), Anna van der Zee (vn), Rowan Prior (vc)
Live Electronics/Tech: Michael Norris
Cinematic Processing: Daniel Belton
Rückenfigur: Emma Martin

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
T.S Eliot

Time is cut open. Time is dismantled. It is this gateway that we open and close to really observe movement, and to glimpse Spirit. In this work it is the reunion of separated or broken parts that finds fluidity and wholeness. The compass of the dance is given full articulation in this state - we can appreciate the elegance and the mastery of the human form in space.

Time Dance is in one sense a study of the dancer in action. Sinews of time - this is the algebra. It is not only examining but also restoring - reuniting from fragments of time - these pieces of time are coalescing to make the dance. When the figure pauses, the cascading echoes created through dance catch up with it. These are the monuments. When we catch up with ourselves we create a harmonic in space time. It is another way of celebrating being human. In the work we observe the relationship and sense of belonging to our home planet, Earth. This is geological, and thalassic - like a great cloak of emotion, the geometric grids and moving point maps are energetic prints containing our stories, our journeys, our pain, fear, beauty, love and joys. They are rippling beyond time, across time with the emotional frequencies that make up what it is to be human. This is also a dance. Time will quiver. I want to magnify silence and distort stillness. The geometry is a field of consciousness. Ultimately our physical bodies are the products of wave actions. The shadow is going into a wave space - and that alters the way we see everything.

Director/ Daniel Belton
Programme /2nd half
Duration: 24-27 mins
Live VJ/Cinematic Processing: Daniel Belton Live Audio Processing/Tuning Forks/Stones/Lemur: Daniel Belton, WJS Grenfell

SOMA SONGS

The Soma Songs project brings together a group of prominent artists and designers from performance, visual, sound, textile and film genres. Fusing digital dance, choreographic screen processes with architectural cinema and sound, the project develops an electro-shamanic ethos.

We trace our stories of architecture from the first attempts to capture and hold space with stone. The skeletons of stone structures have sat with us for millennia. Light is both wave and particle. Light has consciousness. In Soma Songs we conduct this energy and its resulting memory. The original Soma Songs project premiered in 2005 live at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. In 2006 we made the work into a single channel film which to date has made selection to over 20 international festivals. In 2011 Daniel Belton was invited to present Soma Songs at the prestigious Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, PQ11. Further invitations followed including this years acclaimed performance of the evolving live AV set at Festival Internacional de la Imagen 2012, Manizales, Colombia. It is a testimony to the creative team behind Soma Songs that 7 years after its first release, this unique project is gaining new interest on the international stage.

Tour Production/ Good Company Arts in association with Body and Tempo Festivals
Tour Assistant Manager/ Nicholas McBryde
Light Design and Tech/ Sean James
Tech Auckland/ Piet Asplet

Programme Bios/

Daniel Belton and Good Company (Good Company Arts) produce dance theatre works and make art films featuring human movement. The award winning company has an international reputation for producing highly original stage and screen works. Recognised performance artists and specialist technologists work collaboratively with artistic director, Daniel Belton. The main focus is to design a synthesis in moving image. As part of this process Daniel Belton has revisited the practices and effects of early 20th Century Modernism. The films address a dialogue between the human figure and new technologies, particularly in the context of choreography for the screen. www.goodcompanyarts.com Stroma is New Zealand’s largest and most flexible chamber ensemble, able to draw on over 20 players many of whom are principal players with the NZSO. Focusing on music written in the last 100 years, Stroma has been active for over a decade, performing regularly with a repertoire of fresh, cutting-edge compositions, including new works by New Zealand composers. Critics have called Stroma "one of the most interesting and original ensembles to have emerged recently", describing its performances as "vibrant and exhilarating", "stunning" and "staggeringly fine". www.stroma.co.nz

Stories/ "Its Michael's feeling for textures and colours that make this music reflexive - and so beautiful"

Daniel Belton on Michael Norris new score.

Four NZSO players who make up Stroma for this piece, are conducted by Hamish McKeich. "Hamish approached me several years ago with the idea to collaborate. Once I had developed the concept for Time Dance, it was clear to me that Michael Norris was the right person to ask to create the new score. Working with these brilliant artists and the Stroma ensemble is a delight. Its also really pushed me and my film team into new territory. I have gone back to the dance in this work."

"The music seems to be embedded in the black space from which it emerges and into which it folds. In the score the piano is often percussive and linear - these timbres make a synchronisation with the lines in the costume of the dancer figures, almost like looking at staves. The film suggests that the materialization of the land form has come from the dance itself. The geometrics in the space are a memory of where the dance has been. The shadows from human figures are a direct link to our ancestors and the rock artists of the Paleolithic." "I see the 7 movements in Time Dance as a collection of poems which reflect on what it means to be human. With a distinctive nod to the early pioneers of photography, cinematography, and modern dance - the work investigates breaking and restoring, cutting and assembling, by nature of the mechanics of the technology we have developed, to turn the lens on ourselves. Time Dance is about extending our capacity to be fluid and receptive instead of forcing, to be open to the mystery of things instead of confining them."

Daniel Belton

NZSD collaboration/

Daniel has worked closely with a group of NZSD senior students majoring in Contemporary Dance. Their training with him and the resulting dance duets and solos contribute a dynamic youthful energy in Time Dance. "It is great to have these young artists on board, and we are really grateful to Paula Steeds-Huston and Victoria Columbus for their co-operation and support there. Dan and I are both graduates from the school too. As students we learnt Dance History and Baroque Dance with Jennifer Shennan. Not only through the music but also in the dance there has is this kind of “Baroque-ness”. When I watch Verity Jacobsen dance in the film, it reminds me of Ruth St. Denis. Dan and I were also fortunate to study Limon Technique and Repertoire from renowned artist and tutor Louis Solino. So there are some very strong links through all this, coming together in the new work. I think people will love it.” Donnine Harrison Notes from Good Company Arts film team/

Daniel uses choreography to develop time based sculpture and a visual language for his work. The premise with Time Dance is that we have the opportunity to expose a unique sense of curated space for dance on film. Traces of the body in space are caught suspended like the brush marks of the painter - just as Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase of 1912 depicts the mechanistic motion of a figure, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures - it also shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists. This work was inspired by the photographic motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge.

Etienne-Jules Marey was a French scientist whose methods of recording movement revolutionised our way of visualising time and motion. Best remembered for his chronophotography, Marey constructed a singlecamera system that led the way to the invention of cinematography. Linear, calligraphic and two dimensional, the chronophotographs provided a visible demonstration of the invisible "force-lines" that joined together objects in space, their absolute and virtual movement, and the speed, noise and sensation that they absorbed and that emanated from them. Anton Giulio and Arturo Bragaglia (who were part of the Italian Futurist movement 1909-1916), employed a technique that they called Photodynamism where they took long exposures of moving objects. The point was not to mimic reality but to unmask it, and only the paradox of an image that contained motion but did not stop time had the power to do that. Photodynamism marks the intermovement fractions existing in the passages between seconds - a frenzy of motion through repeated overlapping linear forms. We are working in a similar way to dematerialise the human figure - to reveal the interior essence of the dancer. In the traces left behind the body, a vibrant energy of gestures can be seen. As well as showing dance in its pure form on film, we have captured and exposed the dance between seconds.

In dance film we can establish a unique language of possibility - it is such a malleable environment. We are mixing 3d movement into a 2d result. The climax for Time Dance is that it leads us to more possibilities of space. The dancer is our expanding consciousness, sliding through space, dissolving time. Here, bodies appear to be transformed by their own speed, infused with dynamism and energy. Dance exists in stillness. Stillness challenges, provokes and is the dancer.

TIMEDANCE WORLD PREMIÈRE AN ALGEBRA OF MOVEMENT A NEW DANCE FILM FROM GOOD COMPANY ARTS WITH LIVE MUSIC FROM STROMA CHRISTCHURCH OCTOBER 9TH, 8PM BOOK NOW AUCKLAND OCTOBER 17TH, 8PM BOOK NOW TIMEDANCE – an algebra of movement, is a new dance film from Good Company Arts with live music from Stroma. One of NZ’s leading choreographer/ filmmakers, DANIEL BELTON, in collaboration with composer MICHAEL NORRIS, brings to life a major new work of dance film. Featuring live music provided by the Stroma ensemble, TIMEDANCE is a meditation on history, memory, time and space. The music — a modern “filtration” of one of Bach’s best-loved Baroque dance suites for 2 violins, cello, piano and live electronics — shimmers with glistening energy and luminescence, while Belton’s mesmerising images flicker and flow. Good Company Arts and Stroma have extensive reputations for experimental, boundaryshifting work. TIMEDANCE will draw the audience into a kaleidoscopic journey in which dancers explore space, topography and geometry. Under the baton of HAMISH McKEICH, Stroma create a remarkable soundscape which is integral to this rich audiovisual arts spectacle. TIMEDANCE offers New Zealand audiences the chance to experience a truly creative and remarkable evening. For one night only at both Body and Tempo Festivals 2012. For the second half of the programme, the SOMASONGS performance returns following acclaimed presentations in Europe and South America. Good Company Arts continues to win international accolades and awards around the world for their distinctive, arresting and lyrical dance films.

People/

A renowned team of artists and technicians are collaborating on this project - this is the core group:
Daniel Belton (Director, Designer, Film Dance Performer, Film Editor), Donnine Harrison (Manager/
Producer, Film Dance Performer), Alex Leonhartsberger (Film Dance Performer), Verity Jacobsen (Film
Dance Performer), NZSD Senior Contemporary Dance Student Performers (7 Guest Artists are Matthew
Roffe, Andrew Miller, Simone Lapka, Pamela Sidhu, Michael Gudgeon, Alexandra Ford and Brydie Colqhoun),
WJS Grenfell (Motion Graphic Artist), Osraz Densky (Film Post Production), Nigel Jenkins (Electrical,
Technical), Donna Jefferis and Kelly Nichol (Costume), Nils Stroop (Photography, Film Compositing), William
Johnston (Film Art Dept). STROMA Wellington Music Ensemble (4 Live Musicians are Emma Sayers, Megan
Molina, Anna van der Zee, Rowan Prior), Hamish McKeich (Live Music Conductor), Michael Norris (Music
Composer/Live Electronics).

International interest/
Even before we premiere Time Dance the project has interest from Canada, Europe and the UK. The V&A
Gallery, London, Bauhaus University in Weimar, Ryerson University, Toronto, Leeds Metropolitan University,
Leeds, and the World Stage Design Festival 2013, Cardiff.

ENDS

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