Virtual Installations

virtual installations

A body moves in sync with its history, culture, emotions, educations, and understandings. Movement and dance speak those histories and bring them to communities – educating, bring together, and sharing ways of seeing the world. I am creating a series of virtual site-specific dances to create a tie between the people currently living in Iowa, their dances, and the land. Showing a range of movement styles as part of the Iowa, the land, further ties the people to the place, takes away the sense of otherness and creates a whole city dance that can be enjoyed by anyone with access to a cell phone or tablet.

Incorporating dances from different cultures, various presentation techniques and styles, these site-specific performances offer the flair of performance, the awareness of dance as a literal part of the landscape, an embodied experience for the viewer, as well as a fun, geocache-like search for the performance viewing spots for individuals and families to enjoy.

Further, merging screen and dance to create virtual site-specific dances includes the audience in the experience of a performance as they travel to a space, and hold their device to watch a performance. This embodied presence in the work, the experience of being present in a space, moving and interacting with a performance creates a deeper understanding of the performance, self and the space that holds the performance. The richness of dance in Des Moines includes the Meskwaki Nation, Hula, Nepalese, Capoeira, Aztec, Ballroom, Flamenco, Bharatanatyam, Street dance, Latin American, African dance forms, Modern, and Ballet. The ability to virtually embed these forms in the fabric of Des Moines offers an opportunity to highlight and include the many communities which form the cultural richness of Des Moines.

In order to create dance which can be seen by more people, I am creating a series of virtual installations accessible to anyone with a smartphone.

These dances are shot in public spaces, digitized and made available through a website or App. Viewers can call up a video on their phone in the exact spot it was shot and watch it at the same angle. This way, there are virtual site specific dance works available outside of theaters for people who may or may not be exposed, aware, or able to afford theatrical dance.

Dances of Des Moines, supported by the Iowa Arts Council / NEA, ties dance to place – place where communities live, place where the dancers live, the city, the land which support and nourish the dance. These dances will highlight the range of dance available in the Des Moines area. We are working to represent as many forms as possible including the dances of the people who have inhabited this area for thousands of years before it was colonized.

Similar to Janet Cardiff’s audio walks, each participant has a personal and unique experience with the dance as it includes the weather and public around the dance as it happens. While holding a phone out to watch a dance aligned with the landscape they are standing in, the participant sees the space, the dance, the people all as part of the work.