She Waded in Time/Tethered

“Tethered” was a special show for me because Maximilian Shiffman asked me to be a technical director and sound designer early in the process. “She Waded in Time” was an MFA Dance collaboration between Nicole Dagesse and Tara Rynders. Both contained very different scenic elements, but performers participated in both shows. This collaboration is definitely worth watching and reading about.

Check out these flickr streams for SWIT and Tethered for more pictures and video.


She Waded in Time

She Waded in Time

I thought this show was going to be impossible to pull off… The performance called for a ton and a half of sand to be used in boxes, bathtubs, and walkways. The audience removed their shoes and explored the area, which was filled with dancers suspended from the ceiling and buried in sand. The slowly paced choreography culminated with video and an ethereal soundtrack by multi-instrumentalist Allison Swain. The collaborators and dancers were Joy French, Skye Hughes, Stephanie Kobes and Cortney McGuire. Additional dancers were Katie Key, Cherie Hill, Esmeralda Kundanis-Grow, and Lyndia McGauhey.

Tethered

“Tethered” was, for me, the most advanced show of the semester. After “She Waded in Time”, all the sand had had to be struck and preparations had to be made. I think we did it in about 15 minutes, which was pretty impressive. This show was planned for a long time with a number of excellent collaborators. Yolanda Chichester was our sculpture designer and a key element in the success of the show. Her first sculpture was a cloth ribbon ‘knitted’ into an abstract shape suspended about eight feet in the air. Additionally, I designed projections in Jitter to alter the color of the sculpture. This was used in the pre-show, then Brent Bishop took over the feed to manipulate video of a painting of his.

Tethered - womb

The most amazing feature of “Tethered” were the two ‘wombs’ hanging from the ceiling grid. Two dancers emerged from these stretchy-fabric in a climactic birth-cycle theme. This was accompanied by Max’s metal band Narwhal Birdskull. While this progressed, More dancers emerged from another of Yolanda’s sculptures, a ridiculously long ‘tether’ of cloth fabric. Tentacles from the tether blob were given to audience members and the show culminated with full audience interaction with the music, dancer, and the tether.

Doug Craft was the assistant director and provided sound design, Nicole Dagesse and Tara Rynders were the dancers. Brtent Bishop was the live painter, Thad Parascand and Kevin Kaley play bass and guitar for Narwhal Birdskull, and Max is the drummer. Hunter Ewen assisted with video and percussion and Daniella Vinitski was creative collaborator.