Residency overview
The Phoenix Dance Theatre Residency consisted of 5 practical sessions/rehearsals to investigate the possibilities of working with telepresence as a creative space. There was also an introductory meeting and a reflective session to gather feedback from the team. The decision was made to work with improvisation as an exploratory tool, rather than to focus on choreographing a final performance. This provided the maximum opportunity to try different approaches and possibilities with in the time available. Background images were used to inspire simple narrative situations, with which the dancers could interact if they chose. In the first session, the team worked together in a studio space, learning how to use the equipment and how to interact with the digital scenography via the screens. Subsequent sessions took place with team members working remotely. Two dancers were in the same household so they were together physically, while all of the other team members were in separate spaces, each setting up their own equipment. By the end of the residency, a collection of simple improvisations had indicated several possibilities for expansion into more formal choreographic works for future times.
“This project is highly important to performing arts companies, as we seek ways to rehearse and create new work in the wake of COVID 19. It has the potential to reinvent collaborative workshopping, rehearsal and performance spaces in virtual environments that support social distancing even when dancers are working closely together. We are excited by the opportunities that it offers at a time when new possibilities are few and far between for the arts.”
Initially, the Phoenix Dance Theatre team wanted to experiment with alterative viewpoints that are not usually possible to achieve in live stage settings. They chose images of holes in the ground, with four scenographic designs representing different types of spaces. The dancers positioned cameras above their heads pointing down at green screens spread on the floor. This provided a vertical perspective so that the dancers could appear inside the hole or on the ground above the hole. In later sessions, the cameras were positioned in front of the dancers with the green screens behind them, sometimes with furniture under the green screens so that the dancer could appear to be sitting on chairs or climbing on items within the digital scenography. Digital scenography for these sessions included a horizontal hole in the ground, a woodland scene, a Mad Hatter’s tea party in the forest, and a country road at night. Different kinds of interactions were explored in each of these contexts.
Techniques and solutions
The remote dancers each used MacBook computers, connecting to their routers by an ethernet cable, in the most successful cases. They were calling via Skype for the initial sessions, and then via the Google Chrome browser for the subsequent sessions with LiveToAir and vMix. The dancers were supplied with green-screen materials, stands, LED video lights and webcams, along with installation set-up diagrams for their home location. To ensure they all had near-identical sets to collaborate from. It was also suggested that they use additional TV outputs to monitor their interactions and movement remotely.
Reflections and outcomes
It was useful to be reminded in this residency that it takes time to become accustomed to working with and through a digital image of one’s body. Unfortunately, the length of the residency (5 x 1-hour sessions) meant that the dancers were only just starting to become accustomed to linking their physical bodies with their images in the digital space. Longer sessions would have enabled a stronger sense of embodied connection between physical and digital bodies, allowing the dancers to inhabit digital space more readily.
