Rehearsal 3 Disappearing Light

I was intrigued by the concept of a disappearing light source and decided to explore this idea further in a second rehearsal.  This session was a collaborative exploration with dancers Sarah Alexander and Tash Hubert.  We created 8 short phrases of movement (movement snapshots) and placed the material into a small rectangular space of approximately 3x1 metres.  OHP light projected three columns of light onto the back wall of the space.  The 8 snapshots were placed into specific places with careful attention paid to how much light hit the dancers' body and how near or far the dancer was from the original light source.  Once the spatial aspects of the phrase were set I experimented with adding and removing the light by simply switching the OHP machine on and off.  The phrase was performed many times - at points the light revealed a static position, or a dancer already moving in the darkness.  Playing with changing the dancers' distance from the light source helped to add moments of surprise and also served to give the black void a sense of three dimensionality.  The final version can be seen in the 30 second video footage below (the original material was devised in silence but music has been added to the version shown - Memoria by Murcof Martes)