On July 27, 2011 I participated in a 24 hour dance event.
Local arts incubator Project: Space Available recently held a week-long fundraiser, Five Fingers Fundraiser. There were 5 different events each hosted by a different artist or arts collaborative.They invited Jessie Smith, creator/choreographer/sole intelligence of dance concept Dead Bird Movement, to take part.
Jessie’s idea was to ask 5 different dancers and five different musicians to meet with her over a 24 hour span. Each group of Jessie, a dancer, and a musician would spend an hour creating a piece and then they’d present it to a waiting audience. The first piece showed at 10am and the last at 1am.
She asked dance photographer Tim Summers and myself to document the event. I came on as writer. The opening link to this article will take you to the work that Tim and did.
A lot of my favorite performers came through the space that day; I won’t name anyone in the hopes it will lure you into checking the link to actually read my writing and check out Tim’s lovely photographs.
I love photography myself, but I was too busy writing to snap many shots. During the second collaboration between dancer Karn Junkinsmith and musician Maggie Brown I did manage to step away from the keyboard and snap a few. They’re more mood-based than Tim’s work so it’ll give you another view of the event.
(Story continues after the jump…)
And that’s something else I should mention: Jessie had a very novel form of interaction for the audience (novel for the dance world). Each piece would occur once for viewing. She then passed video cameras to random members of the audience. ‘Tape whatever you want,’ Smith told them, ‘I’m interested in your point of view.’ Then the dance would occur a second or even a third time.
The plan is that Smith will review all the footage and create a final collage from it. When this finally happens I’ll post a link to it. She’s very good on following up on her promises so I have no doubt that will happen.