Themes of perception and the use of sound
Each of the twenty or so video dance works that I have directed have been very different in terms of their starting point, who I have been collaborating with and the context in which they were made. However, there are certain themes that have remained constant throughout almost all of the works.
At some level, all explore ‘perception’ and the idea that our understanding and interpretation of an action, relationship or moment in time depends on our point of view and the information we are given. They also all incorporate the fact that the interplay between vision and sound has a great impact on our perception of what is happening on the screen.
Around three or four years ago, I became particularly interested in developing this idea of how different levels and types of perception, both visual and aural, effect the way in which we understand a situation. I also started to think of making a vide
o dance work which would communicate whether you could see it, hear it or see and hear it.
In the process of my research, I came across an English company, Touchdown Dance, who work with dancers with visual impairment in the Contact Improvisation form. Here, my two main areas of interest– improvisation as a creative tool and visual and aural perception – seemed to converge. Together with Touchdown’s director Katy Dymoke, I developed an idea which would eventually become ‘Sense-8’, a video dance commissioned by the Arts Council of England as part of their Capture scheme.
In ‘Sense-8’, the challenge we set ourselves was to take the viewer in deeper and deeper into the performers’ experience. We did this by using the camera in many different ways. In some sections, it circles the dancers, observing their actions from the outside. At other times, we catch ‘bird’s eye’ glimpses of the scene from a surveillance-style camera position. As the video dance progresses, the camera is drawn closer into the action, until as the viewer you feel as though you too are part of the Contact Improvisation jam.
Added to this is the use of sound and voices. We hear the dancers describe, to each other and the viewer, what they are seeing, as they move and as they
observe. This is something that is often done when a dancer with visual impairment or who cannot see at all, is part of a group of Contact Improvisers. It highlights the fact that we all ‘see’ things differently and how our descriptions of what we are seeing and hearing – what we pick up on - reveal a great deal about our perception of our environment. In the edit for ‘Sense-8’, we brought all these elements together, adding layers of sound to the montaged visual material to create one fluid, multi-perspective experience of the dance.
The Truth – a new type of collaboration
Perception is also a strong theme in ‘The Truth’, which takes as its starting point the widespread use of CCTV or surveillance images by the media and how these are exploited to develop speculative narratives around certain high profile events. It explores the idea that the same situation can give rise to completely different interpretations, depending on point of view, perspective and other related information.
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For me, ‘The Truth’ represents a new types of collaboration. Usually, I will work with a closely with choreographer to evolve a new idea for a video dance. In the case of ‘The Truth’, however, it was two dancers, Kate Gowar and Karin Fisher-Potisk, the Artistic Directors of the dancer-run company Ricochet Dance Productions, who approached myself and Simon to make a new video dance work.
Together we - Kate, Karin, Simon & Katrina - came up with the concept for ‘The Truth’. Related to the idea of different interpretations of the same information that is at the core of ‘The Truth’, we then decided that it would add interest and intrigue to work with two choreographers, whose vocabularies and styles differ greatly, thereby giving two different versions of events in the choreography.
So we approached the choreographers – Fin Walker (UK) and Paulo Ribeiro (Portugal) - to create the movement for us. We asked them to respond to the concept of ‘truth’, but we left them in the dark as regards almost every other aspect of the production – location, costume, sound, filming style and soundtrack.
It was very exciting for us all that these two talented choreographers embraced the challenged of this very ‘hands off’ collaboration with such imagination, understanding and commitment.
A new way of working
The way of working I chose to pursue in “The Truth’ was also quite different. Usually I spend a lot of time in the studio with the dancers and choreographer, developing the camera framing and movement as the dancers’ movement evolves. However, this time it felt important that the choreography should follow its own line of development and be created according to the choreographers’ and the dancers’ understanding of the characters relationships and interactions. I hoped this would give the dancers’ performance an integrity of its own and help to produce a tension between their action and how the viewer then experiences this through the way the camera and the editing interprets and alters the action.
So, although I did come into the studio as the choreographers were creating the movement and look at the movement though the lens, I did not start to make decisions about how the movement would be framed until the choreography was completed.
The third element of material that runs through ‘The Truth’ is the surveillance-style ima
ges, set on the concourse of a station. Here we see the four characters, appearing to relate – or not to relate – to each othe
r in ver
y different ways. As video dance progresses, our perception of the relationships between these four characters and their relationship to each other is continually altered by the accumulation of information that we glean through the different scenes and interactions – both ‘choreographed’ and ‘real’ – that we see the characters involved in.
Just as the concept of the film is that the truth can look different depending on your point of view, so the camera and editing offer many different points of view on the same moments. They challenge us to look again at the same moment – or movement – from a different perspective and to experience how this changes the impact of that moment and the perceived relationship between the characters. More
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