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Choreographer Loretta
Livingston's newest performance piece, Dances for White
Rooms, is designed especially for the gallery setting.
The audience sits close and witnesses a one-of-a-kind event
as the performers shape their live compositions in dance, video,
music and art.
Dances for
White Rooms has a cast of ten performers: five dancers,
two video artists, two musicians and a visual artist. All the
artists deal directly with the act of live composition and creation.
The entire performance is improvised, unfolding from a predetermined
script structure. It is performed differently in each setting
and showing. The audience is seated on several sides of the
gallery area, with a walking aisle behind the chairs. The audience
members may change their viewing position at any time by using
the walking aisle. The performers take their cues from the moment,
each other, the gallery space and the members of the audience---creating
live art.
Video artist Kate
Johnson works with both live and prepared imagery. Her prepared
imagery plays on monitors and projections in installation form
as the audience enters. She and her partner, Michael Masucci,
shoot live video footage during the performance that can be
played, enhanced and altered on the monitors and projection
surface in real time, and/or mixed with the pre-designed imagery.
Masucci and Johnson perform and interact live with the dancers.
Composer/violinist
Robin Cox and percussionist/marimba player Erik Leckrone perform
live throughout the performance. They work with a combination
of pre-composed and improvised materials.
Visual artist Richard
Lopez works at a frenetic pace, rendering the events in charcoal
as they unfold. He brings with him a temporary exhibit of his
collected drawings--pencil, charcoal, ink---and monoprints taken
from the work sessions prior to the performance. Working with
both his live impressions and his stored memory of the performers
in action, he performs and improvises his art in the moment.
Dances for
White Rooms is a performance piece appropriate for all
ages. It finds resonance with an audience used to actively participating
in art viewing, and can captivate and convert those who aren't.
Wit, intelligence, virtuosity and surprises play out in this
live art experience.
| Behind the Scenes Expanding the Performance Arena/Why
a gallery space? |
Choreographer/Director
Loretta Livingston chooses to build this work for art spaces.
"I'm interested in the kind of atmosphere that is created when
an audience and the performers are close, visible and attentive
to each other. Attentive because this new work unfolds on an
outline, but is performed improvisationally. It puts a much
higher charge on the performance when everyone knows it is being
created at that moment." "I've chosen the gallery setting for
this project because people come to look at art in museums and
galleries in a slightly different mode than in a theater. The
art is closer to the viewer in a gallery. The viewer can sense
his/her spatial relationship to the work. In "Dances for White
Rooms" the audience will understand more vividly the temporal
nature of performance and the act of creation. It is live art.
The audience will understand themselves to be a part of this
art event that will never be performed again in exactly the
same way. In the context of a gallery the audience is encouraged
to know motion as another idiom in the art maker's realm, connecting
it to the larger worlds of visual imagery."
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Director/Choreographer:
Loretta Livingston
Dancers: Heather Gillette, Alyson Little Jones, Loretta
Livingston, Michael Mizerany, Johnny Tu
Video Art: Kate Johnson
Live Camera: Kate Johnson & Michael Masucci
Music: Robin Cox (composer/violinist) and Erik Leckrone
(marimba/percussionist)
Visual Art: Richard Lopez
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More Press Quotes:
From the premiere of Dances for White Rooms, review
by Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times Dance Critic:
"...audience
members drew lots to select the partnerships between dancers,
musicians, videographers and (visual artist) Lopez. This strategy
inspired cleverness of all kinds--from dancer Johnny Tu's gambits
with (video artist) Johnson to dancer Heather Gillette's bold
and deft attempts to distract Lopez--even to the point of throwing
herself over his sketch pad."
"...a
moment of deep, enigmatic intimacy in the midst of a force field
of group motion"
"Michael
Mizerany danced beyond the top of his form in collaboration
with (composer/violinist) Cox--released into a dimension of
passion, daring and perfect technical control rare on any stage."
"Here
came Livingston's finest accomplishment: the matched prowess
of five beautifully tuned, thinking dancers--each seeming to
sense how everyone else would respond and thus free to vary,
modify or embellish the unison passages without fear of damaging
their moods or patterns."
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