Premiere: June 28, 2012
Choreography, Lighting Design, and Performance: Ellen Deutsch
Costumer: Ruth Deutsch
Technology: Trinculo’s Attic

Over the past month or so, I’ve been collaborating with Ben Peoples of Trinculo’s Attic, who’s developed 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!