Came across this quote yesterday from Simon Pegg. I couldn’t have said it better myself. THIS is what Geeksdanz is all about:
“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.” ~Simon Pegg
Over the past month or so, I’ve been collaborating with Ben Peoples of Trinculo’s Attic, who’s got something really cool: a wireless lighting controller. This is a little tiny doohickey that synchs up to a light board to run light cues, and is portable enough to attach to nearly anything, including a dancer. Check it out:
There’s also a nifty behind-the-scenes video right here, and a detailed blog post from Ben about how the technology works right here.
Forgoing the use of sight gags and blackouts that are so common to these sorts of dances, Progressive Assembly uses the lighting technology to highlight and emphasize the quality of the movements themselves. Spirals of light on the limbs and torso highlight the three-dimensionality of the dancer and draw attention to the full contours of the movements, while pinpoint-bright LED’s mark out pulse-points and emphasize the spatial arrangement and rearrangement of the individual parts.
This is just the beginning–we’ve got lots of ideas for very cool places this collaboration could go! Stay tuned for some more exciting developments!
Had our first costume fitting for Progressive Assembly this afternoon, wherein Ben Peoples wrapped me up in lights and took pictures. It’s going to be a spectacular piece once the whole thing’s put together; our resident seamstress is hard at work tacking down the lights so they’ll stay put. We were even able to hook into the light board and run a mark-through with all the lights going! Filming day is scheduled for this Friday, so stay tuned!
