July 17, 2006

Building a Comprehensive, Historical Dance Video Library

Two comments on a post I wrote last month, Global Historical Dance Video Project, inspired me to write more about this possible online collaborative dance project. (You can read Liam and Lauren's comments.)

To recap, the idea behind this project is to create a categorized video guide to all contemporary and historical dance forms and styles. So, ideally, if you went to this website, you would be able to access a navigation tree that would take you to video clips of any style of dance and you would be able to see which other dance styles influenced it.

What would it take to actually create this project? I think the best approach would be to use a WIKI so that anybody could contribute to this on-going project. It's simply too big of an undertaking for a few people to manage this effort.

I was just looking at a couple of hosted wiki applications: PBwiki and Wetpaint. An alternative, would be to find a free-standing application that I could install on my server.

In terms of the basics of this project, I imagine a simple hierarchical structure so that visitors could quickly find the style and type of dance they are looking for based upon its geographical location, cultural identification, time-period or other distinguishing characteristics. Then, in each section there would be links to videos that highlighted each form or style of dance. In addition, we can also encourage contributors to add text descriptions of each style of dance along with information about the key dancers/choreographers of the dance and the key influences that led to the specific style of dance.

I think to start this type of project, it would take about 20 people or so who wanted to start collaborating on this effort. We'd have to decide what software/application to use, how to structure the periods and types of dances, what guidelines - if any - for the types of videos that would be linked to and many other issues.

Is this a project you would like to participate in? Please email me if you'd like to discuss.

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June 14, 2006

Global Historical Dance Video Project

I'd like to propose a global, non-propriety, collaborative dance video project for dancers and educators:

One of the online resources that I think would be invaluable would be a huge video library with thousands upon thousands of clips that included demonstrations of a massive range of dance styles throughout history.

Anybody could contribute their own videos to this project. Upon uploading your video, you would tag it to indicate the style and period of dance along with a text description.

Then in a centralized wiki devoted to this project, you could add a listing and link to your video in the appropriate section. For example, in Wikipedia there is a "History of Dance" section. We could create a new wiki along these lines, but in our case the main objective would be to categorize thousands of videos by style and other elements.

The end result of such a collaborative project is that by harnessing the collective strength of dance enthusiasts around the world, we could build a great resource that would be an invaluable educational tool.

Personally I'd like it because I'm very curious to learn more about the interconnections among different dance styles and how different genres evolved over time based on a range of influences.

Lately I've been reading a lot of history books the cover the period of the conquest (after 1492), the revolutionary period in the Americas (about 1750-1850) and slavery (I list some of the recent books I've read below). There are quite a few references to dance in most of the books I've read. One of the things I'd like to understand is how the dance forms that are danced today throughout the Americas evolved over time and how different cultures and traditions contributed to each of these dances.

Salsa, for instance, has a rich tradition with multiple influences. What, for example, were the actual dance forms and styles over the past centuries that contributed to and became part of the way Salsa is danced today in different parts of the world? A video library like the one I describe above could provide a great visual gallery to help provide answers to this question about the origins of Salsa.

My Recent History Reading List

- "Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America" by Paul Schneider.

- "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War" by Nathaniel Philbrick.

- "Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and American Revolution" by Simon Schama.

- "Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America" by Ira Berlin.

- "Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution" by Laurent Dubois.

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February 3, 2006

Fascinating Post About Loie Fuller

Right after I wrote my post this morning, Loie Fuller, First Dance Technologist, I came across a post, A Material Girl In A Material World: Dancing Like Loie Fuller, Elaine Supkis in her Culture of Lifestyles blog.

Elaine has performed Loie dances and she provides interesting background about what inspired her to recreate these performances. I'll write more about her post later.

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Loie Fuller, First Dance Technologist

Loie Fuller (1862-1928), a modern dance pioneer, was known for her captivating theatrical and dance performances that combined projections of multi-colored lights onto her flowing silk costumes. She was the first dancer to use the then new incandescent lights of Edison fame, a traveling team of lighting and stage engineers, and her own patented dress designs for her tours in the US and France.

Below I put together a range of online resources (articles, pictures, audio and video) that provide an intriguing portrait of Loie Fuller.

Loie Fuller - NYPL Digital Gallery

Profiles and Bio

- Loie Fuller profile from Wikipedia.

- Loie Fuller profile from online excerpts of CD-ROM program titled "The Early Moderns".

Audio Programs

- Listen to "The spectacular Dances of a Chicagoland Native" (program description), an Interview with Chicago Sun-Times dance and theater critic Hedy Weiss about an exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrec's works including those of one of his favorite subjects, Loie Fuller.

- Listen to "Loie Fuller, Goddess of Light" on Studio 360 This Week (scroll down to third story about Loie Fuller). Interview is with Jody Sperling (dance choreographer and scholar - see below under reconstructions) and others.

Articles and Reviews

- "The Light Fantastic - Fuller, Rosenthal & Tipton", Dance Magazine (February 1996), describes how Thomas Edison's invention of incandescent light made Loie Fuller's experiments with lighting, color and movement possible.

- "Art Nouveau's Esthetic in Motion: Invoking the Spirit of Loie Fuller", by Anna Kisselgoff, a 1998 review of Brygida Ochaim who performed a mixed-media work inspired by Fuller at a dance festival "Four Centuries of Dance in France."

Multimedia Presentations

- Tom Gunning in his audio and image presentation, “Light, Motion, Cinema: The Heritage of Loie Fuller and Germaine Dulac” discusses the influence of Fuller on experimental filmmaker Germaine Dulac.

Films

- These hand tinted stills of The Serpentine Dance from The Edison Art Company might be of Loie Fuller (I'm not sure) who went to Edison's Movie Studio in Menlo Park, New Jersey to have her dances recorded. There is an excellent DVD box set "Edison - The Invention of the Movies (1891-1918)" that includes the Serpentine Dance. It's available through Amazon.com. But you can also rent it through NetFlix, which I did last year - hours and hours of early films that are fascinating to watch.

Serpentine Dance - Edison Art Company

Books

- "Loie Fuller: Goddess of Light" by Richard Nelson Current and Marcia Ewing Current with Photography by Langfier. You can read first chapter and review in New York Times Book Review.

- Quote (scroll down to Chapter 10) from Isadora Duncan's "My Life" about Loie Fuller:

Before our very eyes she turned to many coloured, shining orchids, to a wavering, flowing sea flower, and at length to a spiral-like lily, all the magic of Merlin, the sorcery of light, colour, flowing form. What an extraordinary genius! No imitator of Loie Fuller has ever been able even to hint at her genius!...I went every night to see Loie Fuller, from a box, and I was more and more enthusiastic about her marvelous ephemeral art. That wonderful creature--she became fluid; she became light; she became every colour and flame, and finally she resolved into miraculous spirals of flames wafted toward the Infinite.

Reconstructions of Loie Fuller Dances

- Jody Sperling, choreographer, performer and scholar, re-creates the performances of Loie Fuller through her Time Lapse Dance company. Read about Jody Sperling's performances of Loie Fuller-style solos - including the Serpentine Dance.

Jody Sperling - Dance of the Elements
Copyright Julie Lemberger, 2005

- On Jody Sperling's site, you'll find links to a number of reviews of her performances.

Images, Photographs and Posters

- Eight images of Loie Fuller from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

- Image of Loie Fuller in exhibit, "Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance", at Tate Museum.

Loie Fuller - Untitled 1905
Photo Credit: Roger Sinek

- Search for images of Loie Fuller in Google Images

Inventions

- Description and image of US Patent issues to Loie Fuller for a Garment for Dancers (3rd image on page).

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November 9, 2005

Mirror Dance Documentary Premiers Next Week On PBS

The new Mirror Dance website went up yesterday on PBS. Mirror Dance is a documentary, airing on November 15th, that traces the lives of Cuban-born identical twins that followed different dance careers and live paths after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

By age 11 Ramona and Margarita de Saa both intended to pursue a lives in the ballet and both eventually became members of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. But in 1964 Margarita left Cuba for political reasons and her family moved to Narbeth, Pennsylvania where she eventually founded the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet. And Ramonda, who stayed in Cuba, became director of the Cuban National Schools of Ballet.

This one-hour documentary, filmed in the US and Cuba, traces the lives of both sisters and their eventual reunion in Cuba after being separated for 40 years.

Just reading the website for Mirror Dance is moving - It will be great to see the film next week. The website features a Q&A with the filmmakers, background info. about the Cuban Revolution and a video clip. You'll find another clip on the website for Frances McElroy, the films co-producer and co-director.

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October 26, 2005

"Ballets Russes" Review

Aimee Ts’ao of the Dance Insider writes review of "Ballets Russes" which just opened at Film Forum in NYC.

To see playdates in US, visit Ballets Russes website.

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