Drawing Movement’s Connections

This is the coolest freakin’ thing I have ever seen. I have long imagined it. From the time I began studying ballet and geometry I new there has to be a way to draw dance. Labanotation is so clunky and I magically escaped learning it in college. I was not wishing to become a notator nor did I want to reconstruct dances from a “score”, but I see this way and I imagine that other dancers do to. I see the world in matrix. I notice the space between people and objects, people and other people and part of the body in relation to other body parts. Sometimes these relationships tell a story or convey emotional content, but sometimes it is just architecture; the architecture of a single individual’s movement in space or sometimes that of a duo or group. This is dance defined in data and objects. Finally someone who actually did what I have been seeing for half a century.

Explore and enjoy these videos and the synchronous objects website itself. It is a window into the world in which dancers and choreographers live consciously or unconsciously.

This guy has a great imagination. For example: Scattered Crowd @ ImPulsTanz 2008. But he's also long worked with bunheads and has seen the simplicity and beauty in Balanachine and Petipa, too. I mean, you need those pointe shoes? Here you go: Impressing the Czar and In the middle somewhat elevated. Or maybe if it has Bach you'll know it's classical:

Pacific Northwest Ballet restages One Flat Thing (pictured above with no CAD) with apologies to the audience – who undoubtedly is stuck in a ballet museum.

Here's the man himself doing the dancing deed: Forsythe Solo

“William Forsythe, who has worked internationally for the last 35 years, is recognized as one of the world’s foremost choreographers. His early work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st-century art form, while his more recent works have further extended his research on the performative potentials of dance and his investigation of choreography as a fundamental principle of organization.” more Forsythe bio (.PDF)

This is happed in Columbus, Ohio… Do Ohio dancers use technology?

Forsythe does: check it out…

• Forsythe "From a Classical Position" Part 2
• Forsythe-Reorganizing-Isometries-2-Different Scales
• Forsythe-Lines-Approaches-3-Knotting Exercise
• Forsythe-Reorganizing-Isometries-2-Different Scales
• Forsythe-Writing-Rotating Inscription-6-Arc&Axis
• Forsythe-Lines-Complex Operations-1-Inclination Extension
• Forsythe-Lines-Complex Operations-4-Parallel Sheer
• Forsythe-Lines-Avoidance-2-Volumes
• Forsythe-Lines-Avoidance-3-Own Body Position

• Forsythe-Lines-Avoidance-4-Movement

• Forsythe-Lines-Complex Operations-2-Transporting Lines
  
• Forsythe-Lines-Point point line-6-Collapsing Points
• Forsythe-Lines-Complex Operations-3-Dropping Curves

Yes, of course it’s on the great dance weblog.

Check out the website – Synchronous Objects. I have spent the better part of two days fascinated with the possibilities here. Yes, much of that time waiting for this data intensive website to load.

Click on "view dance" and "alignment forms". This stuff makes Frank Gehry’s work look like a kindergarten. Notice the arcs and curves. This is because our joints have rounded articular surfaces.

There was an event on April 1, which I did not attend, but I can only imagine how cool that must have been. But the exhibit is up until July 26, 2009. A trip to Columbus anyone?