Last Tuesday

I can't believe that Tuesday's in-class collaborative performances are done. The preparations were so involved (hat tip, Michelle, who made sure everything was coordinated seamlessly) that the 6 minute piece I presented seemed like no time at all.

So, "The Grandparents Project" took flight! I did a lot of work to make sure that my dancers knew what what to expect, so getting started was pretty much a breeze minus the few inevitable hold ups that came with being the first on the program and the first to test the Skype connection. My classmates were really good sports, and shared thoughtful anecdotes about their grandparents for myself and the dancers to include in the improvisation. The video I edited worked well, I think. And, most gratifying of all, I got some nice positive feedback. Score!

Alissa's boyfriend came and blessedly filmed it for us, so I will share that video here soon. In the meantime, here are some photos that I captured on Tuesday.

Mapping the Space

Here's a map I've sketched of the performance space for October 25th's showing of "The Grandparents Project."

Click here for a link to the project album with a larger version of this image.

What I'll Need for the Grandparents Project

A brainstorm, to be followed tomorrow by a diagram:

- 2 projectors (one for the video content, the other to project my dancer from Israel into the performance space)

- A laptop (for Skyping with Leia, my collaborator)

- a DVD player or laptop to play the video content

- 2 cameras for shots of the dancing from multiple angles to be fed to my collaborator (and preserved for later)

- Small slips of paper and pens for collecting stories/anecdotes

I don't know if audio will be at all important. The DVD will produce sound on it's own, but I don't foresee that it will need mixing.

The Grandparents Project

On October 25th we've been tasked with presenting some sort of performance that involves collaborators in another location. This set the gears in motion for an idea I'm pretty excited to create. I'm titling it The Grandparents Project.

Allow me to explain:

There is a really old VHS video of my grandfather that was taped before he passed. It was filmed when I was 2 years old, so I'm actually in the video, but I have no recollection of the event. In the video he plays a bunch of old Russian/Yiddish/Jewish folk songs on guitar, tells stories from Russia before he escaped, and recounts his time on the Lower East Side of New York working at my great-grandfather's kosher bakery and hanging out with folks at the Henry Street Settlement (including Alwin Nikolais, I discovered!).

I'd like to create a movement improvisation score, invite some dancer friends, and create a short group improvisation in front of a projection of this video (possibly edited in some way). I'm interested in ideas of memory and recollection because I've been thinking about:

• my grandfather's memories that he recounts in the video
• my lack of memory of the actual filming of the video
• realizing, years later, that my grandfather was probably in the early stages of Alzheimers at this point
• the way ancestry/family shape our personal identities/narratives

And there's audience participation:

The movement improvisation score created for the dancers will include dancer-enacted short stories collected from audience members/classmates - short anecdotes from their own relationship with a grandparent.

Oh, and a collaborator abroad:

Dancer Leia Weil has agreed to participate in the improvisation from Tel Aviv. She will be Skyped into the performance and will interact with a story sent to her during the performance via Skype chat.