AR was created in Stockholm by choreographer Shumpei Nemoto earlier this year. Rachel took part in the film along with colleague Adam Schütt. The film was submitted to the Choreographic Captures Competition, eventually taking the 2nd Prize. The piece was featured in Rumpus Room’s performance at the Ace Cleaner’s at the Ace Hotel this past July.
“AR combines footage of two bodies and thus creates unexpected configurations of human bodily forms. The potential for beauty is explored through the stylistic means of movement and stillness. Recognizable elements are contrasted with less clearly defined images in which the subjects are filmed from various depths and points of view. “AR” thus challenges its viewers to question their conventional viewpoints about the human body.”
-Shumpei Nemoto
A few weeks ago, while back in Stockholm, I saw a choreographic workshop from the dancers of Cullberg Ballet (the company Rachel is currently working with). The workshop was presented by Moderna Dansteatern in a black box theatre at the Dramatiska Institutet. Rachel created a piece in collaboration with Isaac Spencer, who will be joining us for our performances in Portland this summer. The work was titled I could see the smallest things. The main concept of the Rumpus Room’s recent production, RESA, was different aspects of journey and this was a great opportunity for Rachel and Isaac to sketch out some initial ideas.
There isn’t a lot of movement during this short work. Isaac and Rachel mostly focused on building a performance environment that contained both physical and non-physical metaphors of journey. For example, the continued presence of the boat and the rower, or the action of sorting and re-sorting the pile of possessions, both came from a sense of journey. Another concept happening in this work is the concept of the singular incidence, the event that shapes or sparks a series of other events, both before and after. This singular incident is not necessarily explosive or dynamic, but is the lynchpin upon which all other contextual situations rotate around. In the case of I could see the smallest things, this singular incident is the wine being poured, foreshadowed in the document that the audience has in hand at the beginning of the piece. The images of the immediate situation surrounding the event, along with the list of objects on stage at that time, are connected with the stain from the wine, which was applied to every document in the audience.
Our first Portland show in 2007 was based on the work of Joseph Cornell (some great examples of Cornell’s work can be found here). His assemblages, often contained in open front boxes, motivated our evening length performance Details of a Couple. Our starting point for the piece was the construction of our own boxes, co-designed and built by our fantastic collaborator Robert Petty. The idea of a stage within a stage was the dominant theme of the show. We created performance areas of increasing size starting from the boxes themselves and finishing with the performance venue. Portland architects Jennifer Marsicek and Jason Roberts helped us complete the backspace environment by constructing a film screen using the repeating bird motif in Cornell’s assemblages.
Given that we were using a raw and somewhat impractical space, we thought long and hard about how the audience would move through the various stages of the show. The following illustrates how the space was arranged:
Here is more information on Details of a Couple. We would like to give special credit to our lighting designer/production guru Jessica C. Flores. She was invaluable during the creation process. Without her help Details would not have been possible. We would like to thank Hoyt Street Properties for the use of the Pinnacle Pavilion as the performance venue.
Check out the trailer from Details of a Couple below:
Rumpus Room Dance Video Blog coming soon.
