streaming 07
 

Streaming

Commission by the Stanford Dance Division & Sadie Weinburg's "The Group"


Limit of the Marvelous - Dec 07
at Dance Mission Theater San Francisco

Mission Creak Music & Dance Fest - May07
at the Jon Sims Center San Francisco

Duets & Solos - Dec 06
at 10th Street Theater San Diego

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Music: rF's "SunSpot"
Costumes: Linda Brown & Connie Strayer
Dancers: Cari Bellinghausen, Gianna Shepard & Brittany Brown Ceres

With Jennifer Kesler, Rebecca Gilbert, Colleen Phillips & Jenny Ward

Duration: 11 minutes


Video Still, Pictured L-R: bbc, Jennifer, Rebecca, Gianna, Colleen, Jenny
 
 

Streaming is inspired by two vastly different systems that move in similar fashions. I was recently struck by fact that information is rushing at us from many directions-- seeping and infusing into every available crack and crevasse, faster than we can process it or learn thoroughly from it. Particularly with the internet, the amount of information and the pace at which it is presented leaves me feeling unnaturally drowned in “news,” instead of aware and informed. Even more frustrating is the fact that it comes so fast that we wade/trudge through the accurate and the inaccurate information all the same.

Contrary, yet complimentary, the simple & irrepressible quality of the movement of water is calming to me and yet it seemingly takes a similar form as this “rush of information”. As the fluidity of water is gentle and natural, I used this movement metaphor to develop the dance phrase work, hence the squiggly and sharp/direct combinations dynamics. Water helped provide me an understanding for my information overload. Streaming is a commentary on the intersection of the two in their shape and flow.

Through this process, I asked the dancers to be present and interested in making choices, as if seeping themselves. There are no “counts”, so it is their job to listen and react to each other on stage. I wanted them to find options within the framework of the choreography and consciously choose a path. Once I had seen their natural instincts, I further directed the structure to clarify the intention and two distinct sections emerged: a watery section and an information section. These two are variations on each other and made significantly distinct with the help of the music. In keeping with my choreographic interest and ongoing internal/artistic dialogue, I found this piece revealing itself to me throughout the process, made possible by the combination of intent, music & unique individuals converging in the same space and time.

We have been lucky enough to have had several performance opportunities throughout the semester. At one showing, at the Counterpulse Theater in San Francisco, the house manager said that we "invented a vocabulary for fluidity-- each movement fit together to make sensual sentences, creating a completely new visual language." With such a generous compliment, and such clarity from my original intension to the final work on stage, I am grateful to the dancers for bringing such depth into my shallow, frustrated inspiration.