Looking Back

Featuring a solo dancer on stage in relationship to a dance film duet projected on a screen behind her, this piece explores repetition, recurring memories and the notion of being “boxed in.” A gradual development of echoed material in the projections, juxtaposed with the energies of the solo dancer conveys the notions of reaching forward and breaking boundaries.

The live solo dancer is onstage for about six minutes out of the total eight minutes. When she is offstage, the videodance imagery is the focus of attention. The choreography for the dance film duet is based on memories stimulated by photographs given to the dancers during rehearsals, and choreography for the live and prerecorded dancers was developed through an improvisational process. We envision this work as a combination of living memory (embodied by the onstage performer) and recalled memory (projected on the screen). Dancer and dance film, integrated in performance, trace and construct memory in space and in time.

Selected for presentation in the Caught Between: Dancing for Camera and Live Audience festival in Los Angeles.