"Dance of her hands" rehearsal (longer)

Rehearsal footage (long form). "Dance of her hands," February 2008. Staging/concept/choreography: Diana Sherwood, Dancer: Rachel Lopez,

Based on "Tilly Losch in Her Dance of the Hands," a film by Norman Bel Geddes, c. 1930-1933. Original music by Rodney Sauer.

Description:
Based on "Tilly Losch in Her Dance of the Hands," a film by Norman Bel Geddes, c. 1930-1933—original music, Rodney Sauer—"Dance of the hands" is work of "found dance," a discovery and extrapolation of movement material for the stage. The film shows tightly framed close-ups of hands, face, body; movement filmed and edited in such a way that it would be impossible to perform live exactly as filmed. (The film may be a record of Tilly Losch in her dance of the hands, but the choreographic credit for the filmed dance must equally go to the filmmaker, architectural designer Norman Bel Geddes.) The new work, "Dance of her hands," attempts to stage as live the "dance" of exactly what is seen on screen.

Through minute attention to all the images on screen, "Dance of her hands," extrapolates and interprets movement from what can be seen and includes as movement materials film-making elements such as camera angles and edits as a basis for new choreography. In addition, when creating this new staged work, an attempt was made to keep focus on those movements on which Bel Geddes focused viewer attention. So, if a close-up of moving hands was seen, the stage movement attempts to focus viewer attention on the dancer's use of her hands, though the dancers entire body is visible.

Though close attention was paid to reconstructing all movement and movement elements of the dance as seen in the film, the new work does not attempt to recreate the original aesthetic, but instead attempts to reinterpret the original as pure physical movement.

In performance, staged and screened images are presented side by side. In this way "Dance of her hands" explores the tensions between filmed and live movement, the qualities of a 20th vs. 21st century body dancing. But more, performed to Sauer's soundtrack played live as it may have been to the silent film, the new dance becomes a duet, a present dialog, between stage and screen.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• rehearsal