Neither of the two dancers on the program used Loops directly, but both noted the way digital repeatability can alter material. In Looping, Marjorie Morgan fed her own vocalizations into a microphone, to be sampled by Jed Speare and played back as a chorus of sound. Morgan was dancing and telling a story about seashore memories, against Speare's video of the tide coming in over a rocky shore, raindrops, a windshield wiper — cycles that recycled through the dance.
Jonah Bokaer danced with Merce Cunningham from 2000 to 2007. In False Start, which was excerpted from a larger piece, Three Cases of Amnesia, he used a mysterious animated figure that might have been scripted off his own dancing body. On screen, the figure could duplicate itself into chorus lines and trace forms, but it could also rotate its limbs 360 degrees, make a move that crossed through the body, jump in slow motion.
This was more than motion capture. The figure on the screen reminded me of the computer-generated characters in the program LifeForms, which Cunningham has used to create movement. The programmed dancer can do almost anything; live dancers have to figure out how to approximate its superhuman movements.
Alternating with the animated video, Bokaer's live sequences looked like a regular but slightly odd dance. First he stood in one place and moved only his left side. Later he twisted and lurched, stood on one hand with his feet propped on a wall. I realized he was trying to copy the computer figure, but his dance looked like a new invention.
Related:
Giant's steps, Sustainability, Architecture of Heaven and Earth, More 
- Giant's steps
Merce Cunningham's death on July 26 wasn't unexpected. He'd been in frail health since this past winter. He was in a wheelchair for his 90th-birthday celebration in April at Brooklyn Academy of Music. In June, the Cunningham Foundation announced plans for the future of the company and the repertory after his death.
- Sustainability
If you wanted to know what happened at the Merce Cunningham memorial a week ago Wednesday in the Park Avenue Armory, you could get a thousand answers.
- Architecture of Heaven and Earth
Looking at the wavy roofs of Félix Candela's most iconic structures, like the restaurant Los Manatiales (1958) in Mexico City, I think of pinwheels or the fluttering dress of a spinning dancer.
- Keepin' it real . . . sort of
The 2009 Boston Cyberarts Festival (April 24–May 10) includes a handful of shows that focus on computer-simulated environments, both real and imaginary.
- Screen scenes
One persistent question surrounding the 35th Dance on Camera Festival, which winds up this Saturday at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, is “Just what is dance film?” As a category it’s even more accommodating than dance itself.
- Fusions and effusions
Performed on the chapel lawn at Concord Academy a week ago Thursday, Anna Myer’s All at Once utilized a sculptural, gestural movement idiom, but it looked more like a ballet than a modern dance.
- Untold tales
Some dances are made on specific story lines that they keep to themselves.
- City limits
There’s nothing like the first weekend of beautiful weather to raise skepticism about digitally mediated experience.
- Pillow talking
Last summer, Los Angeles Times dance critic Lewis Segal suggested that ballet is dying an ugly, boring death.
- Happy feet
The architectural team of Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the new Institute for Contemporary Art as a 325-seat jewel box, its transparent walls allowing the Boston harbor and skyline to serve as a scenic backdrop or turn opaque as the performance requires.
- Drama dance
Half a century ago something known as dance drama occupied a large part of the modern-dance repertory.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Entertainment, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dance, More
, Entertainment, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dance, Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Marjorie Morgan, Modern Dance, Bill Jones, Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham, Less
