Victor E. Ferrall Artist in Residency Week 2 Reflection

-monday feb 2-

Working Title: Post-Internet-Dance-Theatre-Production-Performance-Show

Run with lights.MOV - this video does not have the section with brandon's music which we are calling "working phrase" and consists of dancers moving furniture pieces but gives a good look at the overall structure of the piece which goes as of yesterday (Feb 2nd): Working - Screen Set Up - Loops (fanfare has moved here too as the background loops are processed and reuploaded) - emotional closing - working music return

• Beginning/ "Working section" - In this part of the dancing last night, they were asked to create a sculpture and then flip it to the mirror image. (about 3 and a half mins)
• This is where we used - Brandon's Music (00:32 - 3:36) in this video: RUN WITH BUILD (still uploading) RUN WITH BUILD
  • loved those first 7 notes, and then it Explodes in this way the piece isn't ready for. 
  • I don't like how "far away" you sound, come closer! At 1 min i like this slowdown and breakaway from the other production but there is a compression to your voice that makes it sound too electronic and non-human. 
  • At 2:04 there is this great effect of a five second fade of your looping voice that really captures something I am looking for. 
  • The use of lyrics is perfect and made me wonder if they could become more of the focus on the track, like hone in on them with less instrumentation. Could you strip it away and follow the track you build? emphasising drum beats and riding melodies a bit more. 
  • I want the movement and the audio world to feel like a bunch of creatures like in the video game Spore. Creatures who are figuring out the world, by taking on this 'working mode' in this section, setting up the stage, and introducing the movement vocabulary. There should be an introduction here as well like how your fade out reintroduces us to our world. 

• A song I find constant inspiration in is: Bone Digger specifically from  (4:00 "all of you" - 5:30 "tips the bowl" Bonedigger) Here is what I'm really looking for with this idea of building the world and feels similar to what you've built in a lot of ways! 
• Honestly, this whole song feels related, the way the second minute builds by matching this "bonedigger" drone and "i never" with this insistent drum that feels for me like Taiko or something ancient to the melody of the guitar that feels kinda futuristic in comparison. along with this genderbending siren like call for me is so beautiful and establishes right away the lack of convention and use of some other world. 
• Set Up - Colin's Music (3:32 -4:35)RUN WITH BUILD
  • We really enjoyed the build of these first two eight counts but felt like it could be extended longer and live in simplicity for a while. I also felt like the driving percussion coming from the alarm was effective but needed some more "texture" by which i mean, starting loud and feeling more sampled or shifting into a surrounding feeling or a feeling of going up and down in intensity that maybe mimics the layering of speed and instruments you already have as part of the world. 
  • The third and fourth 8 counts were the perfect amount of complexity to create the main body of the music. I think it got too complicated too quickly and could get there but only to signal to the dancers that the music is about to shift. 
  • In this run, I had to manually loop the music once, and it ended up being almost exactly double the time of the file you sent
  • If i were to break it down:
  • 0:00-0:07 great intro, could be slower, could build more, dont need the alarm right away, want to be more surprised by it
  • 0:07-0:16 loved this complexity especially the last flourish, but this is where the complexity should really hone in on for most of the min of sound, 
  • the rest: feel like an expert level of beat saber in the best way but needs to take longer for both audience and dancers to be accustomed to the building of it. 
• Loops - Jasmine's Music (0:22 - 1:46) Run with lights.MOV
  • In the following video we use the music to do the second loop and it works really well given the slowness of our "sunshine phrase" which starts with this moment of synchronizing high arching arms and ends with a conversational stationary arm flail dance. 
  • (0:48 - 02:16) Loop 2 (0:48- 2:16).MP4
  • if anything were to be changed, I would love if the core structure could remain the same and i think this timing was mostly working 
  • There is a bit of distortion in the audio which I'm not really sure about but could just be my old headphones. 
  • I like the distortion but there needs to be some part that is a bit more clear and driving. maybe the bassline? I would honestly love to hear the bassline alone to start for a while, maybe even a full two 8 counts? what is that? 4 measures? 
  • Run with lights.MOV (2:44 - ) here you cansee the loop 2 of it all. the dancers change clothes and there is 
  • LOOPYYYYY2.mov this should be the same video… 
• Fanfare - Soren (0:00 -0:27)Loop 2 (0:48- 2:16).MP4
• Run with lights.MOV (1:50 - 2:30) 
  • We decided to move the fanfare here to the set-up section between the looping phrase. 
  • it works well but just will need to be repeated because it is so short. I was running it out of itunes and just had the repeat 🔄button pressed. which worked well but does leave a bit of silence. 
  • The dancers right now are doing a "quick phrase" which we will extend slightly but will not be longer than a min. 
  • it feels very patriotic and balletic which has a contested and political history even today
  • ballet, as we know was used as an art to form nationalistic identities of class and modernity, highlighting a young peoples ability and a nations ability to create works of beauty and abundance which differentiated themselves from other nations and created shared cultural values of simplicity, clarity, excellence, and purity right? okok that was neoclassicism and this Ballenchine reaction to the chaos of the first world war, I believe. And what you've created here is almost neo-feudalism and feels so incredibly relevant to the disparities we see in power and wealth now. there is less of a monoculture now yes, but I do see a trend towards the simplicity of lyrucal dance, or of competition dance, of tricks to music, of big dancing without meaning, and this feels in a lot of ways like a regression, like an avoidance of sticking out ones neck 
  • this is all to say… the fanfare and gravatas is really working, especially with the olympics coming up, especially with the balletness of this musical phrase, but if you're interested in diving deeper, go for it! https://brooklynrail.org/2021/12/dance/The-Fascist-Turn-and-Dance/
• Emotional Closing
• Working Section Return