PRESS
Gravity Games
MIT dancers experiment with off-balance choreography
Technology Review
May 2005
During the Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January, MIT’s Kinaesthetics Lab was issued a four-day mechanical-engineering challenge. It
wasn’t to design a solar-powered car or a remote-controlled robot, however, but to
build a swaying dance platform. The Kinaesthetics Lab, you see, is a student
choreography group. The challenge came as Paula Josa-Jones, a Boston-based
choreographer, and Ellen Sebring, SM’86, a research associate in MIT’s Visualizing Cultures project, worked with the students to choreograph a dance
based on the concepts of “altered” gravity and lost balance.
Josa-Jones began to conceive the project in the early spring of 2001. She asked
Sebring to join her in filming two dancers walking along the sea wall near her
Martha’s Vineyard home. The camera circled around the dancers, creating the illusion
that the ground itself was swaying. Following the events of September 11, 2001,
their work seemed well times to reflect the internal turbulence that the nation
was experiencing. The film was later shown at the 2004 Dance on Camera Festival
in New York City.
During IAP, Josa-Jones and Sebring wanted to take their project a step further
and literally make dancers lose their balance. The artists and the
Kinaesthetics Lab students explored the mechanical aspect of balance as well as
the artistic challenges of blending video with live dance. Their work
culminated in a performance on January 22.
At the performance, two women danced on the platform, which was rocked by the
Kinaesthetics students, as Sebring and Josa-Jones’ video played behind them. The dancers’ movements were dreamlike as they swayed with and against the gyrations of the
platform. Only their tense ankle muscles and hasty foot placement revealed how
difficult it was for them to maintain their balance.
Sebring says she was pleased with the performance, and particularly with the “beauty in the ‘Atlas’ role of the [platform] movers, wonderfully performed by the MIT students, who
shifted the mechanism and thereby the dancers’ world.” Their success has made the workshop a launching point for further projects,
Sebring says. She imagines “using a broader swatch of stage” in the future, “for example, creating a sense of walking through air.”
Catherine Nichols
Technology Review
May 2005
Falling about the place
MIT Tech Talk
February 2, 2005
"TILT," a collaboration between video artist Ellen Sebring (S.M.VisS 1986) and
Boston choreographer Paula Josa-Jones, combined large-screen video, live
dancers and a gravity-disrupting mechanism called a "levitron," a sort of
padded see-saw with handles at either end, to wonderful effect. Sebring and
Josa-Jones held a "TILT" workshop during IAP, which culminated in a
demonstration on Jan. 22 in Kresge Auditorium. Performers included Alissa
Cardone and Ingrid Schatz, both members of Josa-Jones' dance company
Performance Works, and members of MIT's Kinaesthetics Lab, a student
choreography group. Cardone and Schatz performed on the Levitron. The MIT
students provided the gravitational shifts. Photo / Donna Coveney
Un-leveling the playing field
MIT Tech Talk
January 12, 2005
What happens when a choreographer pulls the floor out from beneath her graceful,
agile, well-trained dancers? What happens when gravity shifts beneath their
feet?
"TILT," a new collaboration between video artist Ellen Sebring (S.M.VisS 1986)
and acclaimed Boston choreographer Paula Josa-Jones, explores that new
frontier. The performance combines large-screen video, live dancers, and a
gravity-disrupting mechanism called a "levitron" to discover new realms of
movement.
Starting Sunday, Jan. 16, the artists will conduct a four-day workshop for
students to create performance elements for "TILT," including choreography,
lighting and a rudimentary levitron designed by Geoff Benson. The workshop will
culminate in a lecture demonstration on Saturday, Jan. 22 at 3 p.m. in Kresge
Auditorium. Performers will include Alissa Cardone and Ingrid Schatz, both
members of Paula Josa-Jones' dance company Performance Works, and members of
MIT's Kinaesthetics Lab, a student choreography group.
The performers will experiment with ways to mirror on stage the tilt effect,
which was created by camera movement in the videotape. Sebring notes that when
gravity is disrupted, the dancers are thrown out of balance, evoking new types
of dance movement. "We hope to get some ideas as to how to build a more
sophisticated levitron in the future," she said.
Josa-Jones and Sebring have collaborated for the past 15 years on a wide range
of works for dance and film. Most recently, they created a video version of
"RIDE," Josa-Jones' work for dressage horses and dancers currently under
development as a Broadway-style production. "TILT" was shown in video form at
last year's Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center.
Sebring was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies from 1987-1993
and is currently an research associate in the Visualizing Cultures project
under the direction of professors John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa. Sebring was
selected by the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women to
direct a film in Hollywood; she has directed more than 30 documentaries on
visual artists, dance and theater. In 2004 she received a residency to compose
music for "DIVE," an interactive video installation featuring Josa-Jones, which
also will be screened at the Jan. 22 event in Kresge.
