Watch a Step-by-Step Breakdown of La La Land’s Incredibly Complex, Off Ramp Opening Number

in Dance, Film, Music | October 30th, 2017

La La Land, writer and direc­tor Damien Chazelle’s award-win­ning Valen­tine to Hol­ly­wood musi­cals, attract­ed legions of fans upon its release last Decem­ber.

Their ardor is book­end­ed by the enmi­ty of Broad­way diehards under­whelmed by the stars’ singing and danc­ing chops and those who detest musi­cals on prin­ci­ple.

The above video may not lead the detrac­tors to swal­low Chazelle’s Kool-Aid col­ored vision, but lis­ten­ing to chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mandy Moore’s behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow of the com­pli­cat­ed open­ing num­ber, “Anoth­er Day of Sun,” should inspire respect for the mas­sive feat of cin­e­mat­ic coor­di­na­tion below.

This may be the first time in his­to­ry that a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er has sin­gled out the Trans­port Depart­ment for pub­lic praise.

Remem­ber how your folks used to freak out about you dent­ing the hood when you capered atop the fam­i­ly Coun­try Squire? Turns out they were right.

One of the Trans­po’ crew’s cru­cial assign­ments was plac­ing vehi­cles with spe­cial­ly rein­forced hoods and roofs in the spots where dancers had been chore­o­graphed to bound on top of them. Get­ting it wrong ear­ly on would have wast­ed valu­able time on a two day shoot that shut down an exit ramp con­nect­ing the 110 and 105 free­ways.

The real La La Land con­jures fan­tasies of Ange­lyne clad in head-to-toe pink behind the wheel of her match­ing pink Corvette, but for this num­ber, the Cos­tume Depart­ment col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Trans­port Depart­ment to diver­si­fy the palette.

In oth­er words, the red-gowned fla­men­co dancer could emerge from a yel­low car, and the yel­low-shirt­ed krumper could emerge from a red car, but not vice ver­sa.

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the art depart­ment refrained from a total col­or-coor­di­na­tion black­out. That moment when a gust of wind catch­es the skirts of the blonde conductor’s yel­low dress plays like an inten­tion­al trib­ute to Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, when in fact it was a lucky acci­dent made all the more glo­ri­ous by the sun­ny draw­ers she was sport­ing under­neath.

Oth­er day-of acci­dents required on-the-fly inge­nu­ity, such as enlist­ing three burly crew mem­bers to pro­vide off screen help to a per­former strug­gling with a mal­func­tion­ing door to the truck con­ceal­ing a Latin band with­in. (With tem­per­a­tures soar­ing to 104°, they were hot in more ways than one.)

Moore was also off-cam­era, hid­ing under a chas­sis to cue the skate­board­er, who was unfa­mil­iar with the 8‑count the 30 main dancers were trained to respond to.

Oth­er “spe­cial skills” per­form­ers include a BMX bik­er, a Park­our traceur, the director’s hula hoop­ing sis­ter, and a stunt woman whose abil­i­ty to back­flip into the nar­row chan­nel between two parked cars  land­ed her the part… and kept her injury-free for over 40 takes.

Half of the fin­ished film’s grid­locked cel­e­brants are CGI gen­er­at­ed, but the live per­form­ers had to remain in synch with the pre-record­ed song by Justin Hur­witz, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul, a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge giv­en the size of the out­door film­ing area. Exec­u­tive music pro­duc­er Mar­ius de Vries and engi­neer Nicholai Bax­ter solved that one by loop­ing the track into each car’s radio, plus a num­ber of hid­den speak­ers and two more on a mov­ing rig.

Moore was deter­mined to keep her care­ful­ly plot­ted moves from feel­ing too dance‑y—the only time the dancers per­form in uni­son is at the very end, right before they hop back down, reen­ter their vehi­cles, and slam their doors shut as one.

For a more nat­u­ral­is­tic vision, watch direc­tor Chazelle’s iPhone footage of the main dancers rehears­ing in a park­ing lot, pri­or to the shoot.

Fun­ny how, left to their own devices, these Ange­lenos seem to wear almost as much black and grey as their coun­ter­parts on the east coast….

The exu­ber­ance of the orig­i­nal has giv­en rise to numer­ous com­mu­ni­ty-based trib­utes and par­o­dies, with stand-outs com­ing from the Xia­men For­eign Lan­guage School in Chi­na, North Carolina’s Camp Mer­rie-Woode, Notre Dame High School in Chazelle’s home state of New Jer­sey, and a 17-year-old Ari­zona boy mak­ing a prompos­al to lead­ing lady Emma Stone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

1944 Instruc­tion­al Video Teach­es You the Lindy Hop, the Dance That Orig­i­nat­ed in 1920’s Harlem Ball­rooms

The Addams Fam­i­ly Dance to The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She is cur­rent­ly direct­ing The­ater of the Apes Sub-Adult Divi­sion in George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm, open­ing next week in New York City.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Brooklyn Academy of Music Puts Online 70,000 Objects Documenting the History of the Performing Arts: Download Playbills, Posters & More

in Art, Dance, Opera, Theatre | August 23rd, 2017

Yes­ter­day the sad news broke that The Vil­lage Voice will dis­con­tin­ue its print edi­tion. Co-found­ed by Nor­man Mail­er in 1955 and pro­vid­ing New York­ers with savvy music writ­ing, raunchy advice columns, juicy exposés, reviews, enter­tain­ment list­ings, apart­ments, jobs, band mem­bers, ter­ri­ble room­mates, and pret­ty much any­thing else one might desire every week for over half a cen­tu­ry, the paper will be missed. Though it won’t dis­ap­pear online, the loss of the street-lev­el copy in its com­fort­ing­ly famil­iar red plas­tic box marks the abrupt end of an era. Those of us inclined to mourn its pass­ing can take some solace in the fact that so many of the city’s key cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions still per­sist.

Promi­nent among them, Brooklyn’s Acad­e­my of Music, or BAM, has been at it since 1861, when it began as the home of the Phil­har­mon­ic Soci­ety of Brook­lyn. It has inhab­it­ed its present Beaux Arts build­ing in Fort Greene since 1908. In its 150 years as a per­for­mance space for opera, clas­si­cal, avant-garde the­ater, dance, and music, and film, BAM has amassed quite a col­lec­tion of mem­o­ra­bil­ia. This year, on its cen­tu­ry-and-a-half anniver­sary, it has made 70,000 of those arti­facts avail­able to the pub­lic in its Leon Levy Dig­i­tal Archive. Like future issues of the Voice, you can­not hold these in your hand, unless you hap­pen to be one of the museum’s cura­tors. But “researchers—or any­one else inter­est­ed,” writes The New York Times, “can cre­ate per­son­al­ized col­lec­tions based on spe­cif­ic artists, com­pa­nies or eras.”

The his­to­ry rep­re­sent­ed here is vast and deep, by a young country’s stan­dards. “Every pres­i­den­tial can­di­date made cam­paign stops there before there was tele­vi­sion,” says for­mer BAM pres­i­dent Karen Brooks Hop­kins. “Mary Todd Lin­coln was in the audi­ence dur­ing the open­ing week of fes­tiv­i­ties. Then you have [Rudolph] Nuryev mak­ing his first per­for­mance in the West just after he defects, [Martha] Gra­ham per­form­ing her last per­for­mance on stage….” These land­mark moments notwith­stand­ing, BAM has earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a home for avant-garde per­for­mance art, and the col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly reflects that dimen­sion among the 40,000 artists rep­re­sent­ed.

We have fur­ther up the post­card Kei­th Har­ing designed for a 1984 Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane piece called Secret Pas­tures (Har­ing also designed the sets). We have the poster above for a 1981 per­for­mance of Philip Glass’ Satya­gra­ha, his opera based on the life of Gand­hi. And below, a poster for the 1983 world pre­mier of Lau­rie Anderson’s Unit­ed States: Parts I‑IV. These objects come from BAM’s Next Wave Fes­ti­val col­lec­tion, which con­tains many thou­sands of pho­tographs, play­bills, and posters from the space’s more exper­i­men­tal side, many, though not all of them, down­load­able.

Between the Civ­il War mem­o­ra­bil­ia and mod­ernist doc­u­ments, you’ll find all sorts of fas­ci­nat­ing ephemera: pho­tos of a very young Meryl Streep and Christo­pher Lloyd in a 1977 pro­duc­tion of Hap­py End at the Chelsea The­ater dur­ing a BAM Spring Series, or of an old­er Patrick Stew­art in a 2008 Mac­beth. Just below, we have a charm­ing play­ing card fea­tur­ing the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music’s Peter Jay Sharp build­ing in 1909, the year after it was built. It’s an impos­ing struc­ture that seems like it might last for­ev­er, though much of the vibrant cre­ative work fea­tured year after year at BAM may some­day also move entire­ly into dig­i­tal spaces. Enter the com­plete BAM dig­i­tal archive here.

via The New York Times/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The The­ater Dic­tio­nary: A Free Video Guide to The­atre Lin­go

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch the 1917 Ballet “Parade”: Created by Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso & Jean Cocteau, It Provoked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Surrealism”

in Art, Dance, Music | May 10th, 2017

In 1917, a hand­ful of Europe’s lead­ing avant-garde artists col­lab­o­rat­ed on a project that it’s hard to believe actu­al­ly exists. Con­ceived “in the fer­tile, cre­ative mind of Jean Cocteau,” writes Muse­wor­thy, the bal­let Parade com­bined the tal­ents of Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so, and Sergei Diaghilev’s dance com­pa­ny the Bal­lets Russ­es in a cubist slice of dream­like life. Its brings pop­u­lar enter­tain­ments into the high art of bal­let, some­thing sim­ply not done at the time, and fea­tures a very ear­ly use of sound effects in the score, added by Cocteau, to Satie’s annoy­ance. Parade was Satie’s first bal­let and the first (but not the only) time he would work with Picas­so.

Cocteau’s short, one-act sce­nario presents us with a troupe of car­ni­val per­form­ers try­ing to entice passers­by into their shows. They are unsuc­cess­ful, this troupe, con­sist­ing of a Chi­nese magi­cian,  young Amer­i­can girl, a pair of acro­bats, a horse, and sev­er­al dancers in huge card­board cubist cos­tumes so heavy and awk­ward they can hard­ly move.

But “if any­one found Picasso’s cos­tume designs a bit wacky, they’d sure be pleased with his gor­geous set designs,” Muse­wor­thy notes, point­ing out the back­drop above. Indeed it was hard­ly unusu­al for an avant-garde mod­ernist painter to design for the bal­let; “Sal­vador Dali, Marc Cha­gall, Andre Derain, Joan Miro, and Léon Bakst all worked on cos­tumes and scenery, much of it for the Bal­lets Russ­es.”

But there was some­thing espe­cial­ly infu­ri­at­ing about this piece for audi­ences. (You can see an excerpt from a recent pro­duc­tion at the top, and a low qual­i­ty video of a longer per­for­mance above.) The pre­miere pro­voked an even big­ger riot than Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had four years ear­li­er. It’s said that Erik Satie was slapped in the face by an angry attendee. “Crit­ics weren’t much kinder than the mass­es,” Muse­wor­thy adds. After one scathing review, Satie sent the crit­ic angry post­cards call­ing him a “block­head,” “cretin,” and an “arse.” He was con­vict­ed of libel but man­aged to evade a prison sen­tence.

Picas­so, on the oth­er hand, “came out of the Parade deba­cle quite well” and would mar­ry one of the dancers, Olga Khokhlo­va the fol­low­ing year. His high­ly-regard­ed design and cos­tum­ing part­ly inspired the poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire to coin in his pro­gram notes the word “sur­re­al­ism” before Sur­re­al­ism became an artis­tic phe­nom­e­non in Paris. As such, Parade should maybe be required view­ing for every stu­dent of Sur­re­al­ist art, dance, film, etc. from Dali to David Lynch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

A Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Avant-Garde Music: Stream 145 Min­utes of 20th Cen­tu­ry Art Music, Includ­ing Mod­ernism, Futur­ism, Dadaism & Beyond

Hear Igor Stravinsky’s Sym­phonies & Bal­lets in a Com­plete, 32-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Marcel Marceau Mime The Mask Maker, a Story Created for Him by Alejandro Jodorowsky (1959)

in Dance, Film | April 7th, 2017

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, as any­one who’s wit­nessed a movie of his play out onscreen might guess, has steeped him­self in the mys­ti­cal arts, but it would take an astute view­er to guess that he received some of his ear­li­est train­ing in the field of mime. Dur­ing his time in Paris in the 1950s, the Chilean-born film­mak­er, yet to shoot a sin­gle frame but hav­ing already run his own per­for­mance troupe back in San­ti­a­go, began study­ing under Éti­enne Decroux, not only a mas­ter of mime but a mas­ter teacher of mime. Jodor­owsky then joined and went on a world tour with a mime group led by one of Decroux’s espe­cial­ly promis­ing stu­dents, one Mar­cel Marceau.

Few today could think of mime with­out Marceau’s name com­ing to mind, and none could think of Marceau with­out hav­ing at least a sense that the man rede­fined the art. Per­form­ers had, of course, used their bod­ies to word­less­ly evoke dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the human expe­ri­ence since antiq­ui­ty, but Marceau — who could take his view­ers through an entire human life in four min­utes — brought it to anoth­er lev­el entire­ly.

Some of Jodor­owsky’s fans might say the same about the direc­tor, and in the video above they can wit­ness per­haps the two men’s only sur­viv­ing cre­ation: Marceau’s 1959 per­for­mance of The Mask Mak­er, a piece Jodor­owsky thought up for him.

“Jodor­owsky would say, ‘Mar­cel, will you accept if I give you an idea for a sto­ry?’ ” remem­bered Marceau in a late inter­view. “I replied, ‘Of course, if the idea is good.’ Jodor­owsky said, ‘What do you think of a man who tries on dif­fer­ent masks show­ing a vari­ety of emo­tions? He puts on a laugh­ing mask that gets stuck on his face; he tries des­per­ate­ly but it will not come off. He has to blind him­self to take it off his face.’ I did the chore­og­ra­phy myself, and then we shared the rights for this pan­tomime.” Two oth­er Marceau-Jodor­owsky works in mime fol­lowed, The Saber of the Samu­rai and “anoth­er cru­el tale” called The Eater of Hearts.

At once shocked and moved, accord­ing to Pro­ject­ed Fig­ures’ “Brief Guide to Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky,” by the “excess of vio­lence” in these mime rou­tines, Marceau nev­er­the­less per­formed them with what looks like the fullest com­mit­ment to the con­cept. Jodor­owsky in turn made use of what he’d learned from Marceau even as he switched arts and began mak­ing films. The influ­ence shows in his very first short film, 1957’s La Cra­vate, a word­less phys­i­cal per­for­mance for the cam­era. His­to­ry has­n’t record­ed whether Marceau ever watched it, but he’d sure­ly rec­og­nize his for­mer col­lab­o­ra­tor’s sen­si­bil­i­ty in the con­tent: it also goes by the Eng­lish title The Sev­ered Heads.

A 1975 ver­sion appears below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cel Marceau Mimes the Pro­gres­sion of Human Life, From Birth to Death, in 4 Min­utes

How Mar­cel Marceau Start­ed Mim­ing to Save Chil­dren from the Holo­caust

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch FLAMENCO AT 5:15, a Life-Affirming, Oscar-Winning Documentary About a Flamenco Dance Class

in Dance, Film, Life | March 10th, 2017

FLAMENCO AT 5:15, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning short doc­u­men­tary, above, is a wel­come anti­dote to the depress­ing specter of youth­ful bod­ies in a chron­ic state of com­put­er-relat­ed pos­tur­al col­lapse.

Direc­tor Cyn­thia Scott’s thir­ty-minute vignette can­not help but show off the beau­ti­ful, high­ly trained physiques of the young dancers delv­ing into the art of fla­men­co at Canada’s Nation­al Bal­let School.

She also cap­tures the last­ing beau­ty of their instruc­tor, Susana Audeoud, then in her late 60s. Her pos­ture erect, her eyes shin­ing bright­ly in a face weath­ered by expe­ri­ence and time, Audeleoud shares one of flamenco’s great secrets—that its prac­tion­ers, unlike their coun­ter­parts in the bal­let, can con­tin­ue danc­ing until they die. (Audleoud her­self passed away on the first day of 2010, at the age of 93.)

Fla­men­co is an incred­i­bly exact­ing art, but Aude­loud and her hus­band, com­pos­er Anto­nio Rob­le­do, showed them­selves to be warm and good humored teach­ers.

All of us could ben­e­fit from fol­low­ing Aude­loud’s instruc­tions to her bare­foot pupils at the 1:10 mark. For­go your med­i­ta­tion app for a day and give it a try.

Or join the stu­dents in Robledo’s joy­ful group clap­ping exer­cise at the 8:00 mark.

Accord­ing to Aude­loud, fla­men­co dancers only dance when it’s nec­es­sary…

I know that most of us are utter­ly with­out train­ing, but it appears that we have entered a peri­od of extreme neces­si­ty.

So put on your shoes, stomp your feet, and clap as if no one is watch­ing.

You can find FLAMENCO AT 5:15 list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grace­ful Move­ments of Kung Fu & Mod­ern Dance Revealed in Stun­ning Motion Visu­al­iza­tions

1944 Instruc­tion­al Video Teach­es You the Lindy Hop, the Dance That Orig­i­nat­ed in 1920’s Harlem Ball­rooms

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er whose new play. Zam­boni Godot, is now play­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch the Celebrated Ballerina Anna Pavlova Perform “The Dying Swan” (1925)

in Biology, Dance, Video - Arts & Culture | November 11th, 2016

Pre­pare my swan cos­tume.

— alleged last words of bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, as report­ed by her hus­band

The Inter­net sug­gests that swans are fair­ly tough spec­i­mens, quick to hiss and flap at any YouTu­ber unwise enough to vio­late their per­son­al space with a video cam­era.

The cel­e­brat­ed bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va (1881–1931) paints a dif­fer­ent pic­ture in her sig­na­ture piece, The Dying Swan.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mikhail Fokine cre­at­ed the four minute solo in 1905 at Pavlova’s request, draw­ing on her admi­ra­tion for some res­i­dent swans in a Leningrad pub­lic park and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson’s poem “The Dying Swan.”

It was per­haps a hap­py acci­dent that he had just learned how to play Camille Saint-Saëns’ Le Cygne from Le Car­naval des Ani­maux on his man­dolin. Per­formed on cel­lo, as orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed, it sup­plies a mood of gor­geous melan­choly with which to observe the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter’s en pointe death throes.

Fokine’s descrip­tion of the work’s cre­ation in Dance Mag­a­zine’s August 1931 issue speaks to the rig­or of these prac­ti­tion­ers and their art form:

It was almost an impro­vi­sa­tion. I danced in front of her [Pavlo­va], she direct­ly behind me. Then she danced and I walked along­side her, curv­ing her arms and cor­rect­ing details of pos­es. Pri­or to this com­po­si­tion, I was accused of bare­foot­ed ten­den­cies and of reject­ing toe danc­ing in gen­er­al. The Dying Swan was my answer to such criticism…The dance is tech­ni­cal­ly more dif­fi­cult than it may appear. The dancer moves con­stant­ly using  dif­fer­ent bour­rees. The feet must be beau­ti­ful, express­ing a trem­bling. All paus­es in sus-sous must show legs brought to one point. The arms and the back work inde­pen­dent­ly of the feet which con­tin­ue to move reg­u­lar­ly.

The archival footage from 1925, above, con­veys what Fokine’s words cannot—the deep emo­tion for which this par­tic­u­lar inter­preter was known. It’s a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence to watch this bro­ken ani­mal fight­ing for its sur­vival, quiv­er­ing and heav­ing, before crum­pling at last. (A pity that this ver­sion cuts off so abrupt­ly… that final note should linger.)

Pavlo­va per­formed The Dying Swan around 4000 times over the course of her career, nev­er sick­en­ing of it, or of the beasts who inspired it. Swans pop­u­lat­ed a small pond at her Eng­lish coun­try home. You can wit­ness her fond­ness for them, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

Bal­let Dancers Do Their Hard­est Moves in Slow Motion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Graceful Movements of Kung Fu & Modern Dance Revealed in Stunning Motion Visualizations

in Animation, Art, Dance, Technology | November 3rd, 2016

When I first saw what was then the height of motion cap­ture in 1999—The Matrix’s “bul­let time” and kung fu sequences—I was suit­ably impressed, and yet… the extreme manip­u­la­tion of the real (which couldn’t have hap­pened in a more appro­pri­ate film, grant­ed) also seemed a lit­tle like a cheat. In the days before com­put­ers ren­dered 99% of spe­cial effects, part of the fun of watch­ing an effects film was spot­ting the seams. The short “Kung Fu Visu­al­iza­tion” above, from Ger­man dig­i­tal artist Tobias Gremm­ler, deft­ly com­bines both of these aes­thet­ic inclinations—the love of arti­fice and the awe of liq­uid-smooth dig­i­tal motion—in rustling, swirling, shim­mer­ing ani­mat­ed art that para­dox­i­cal­ly shows us the seams of flu­id move­ment.

Recall­ing Mar­cel Duchamp’s famous nude or the dynam­ic sculp­ture of Umber­to Boc­cioni, Gremm­ler ani­mates these mod­ernist dreams using grace­ful motions cap­tured from two Kung Fu mas­ters. Each sin­u­ous mar­tial arts rou­tine is ren­dered with a dif­fer­ent mate­r­i­al tex­ture, with accom­pa­ny­ing sound effects and dra­mat­ic music. “Visu­al­iz­ing the invis­i­ble is always fas­ci­nat­ing,” writes Gremm­ler, “and motion visu­al­iza­tions have been cre­at­ed even in pre-dig­i­tal times with light, pho­tog­ra­phy, cos­tumes or paint­ings.” (Nor­man McLaren’s 1968 “Pas de deux” offers a strik­ing his­tor­i­cal exam­ple.) Gremm­ler’s stun­ning ani­ma­tion was com­mis­sioned for a Hong Kong Kung Fu exhi­bi­tion and “focus­es on the lega­cy of Hak­ka mar­tial arts in Hong Kong.”

Gremmler’s film may show us process in motion, but he remains coy about his own tech­no­log­i­cal means (unless, pre­sum­ably, you buy his book.) Anoth­er motion cap­ture mas­ter­piece, “Asphyx­ia,” above, uses hum­ble, yet high­ly advanced meth­ods unimag­in­able in 1999, “two inex­pen­sive Xbox One Kinect sen­sors,” writes This is Colos­sal, “to cap­ture the move­ments of dancer Shi­ho Tana­ka.” Film­mak­ers Maria Takeuchi and Fred­eri­co Phillips then “ren­dered the data inside a near pho­to-real­is­tic envi­ron­ment,” mak­ing cre­ative use of low­er-res tics and glitch­es. Com­bined with a love­ly elec­tron­ic score from Takeuchi, the result­ing video’s visu­al poet­ry is impos­si­ble to ade­quate­ly con­vey in words.

What “Asphyx­ia” does show us is a scal­ing back of tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry that reveals a deep lev­el of ges­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion under­neath. “The project,” write the film­mak­ers, “is an effort to explore new ways to use and/or com­bine tech­nolo­gies… with­out many of the com­mer­cial lim­i­ta­tions. The per­for­mance is cen­tered in an elo­quent chore­og­ra­phy that stress­es the desire to be expres­sive with­out bounds.” Although “Asphyx­ia” is obvi­ous­ly a lower-quality—digitally speaking—work than Gremmler’s Kung Fu Visu­al­iza­tion, it is none the worse for it. Both use motion cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy in inno­v­a­tive ways that fore­ground the artistry, rather than the mim­ic­ry, of dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion. (Some­what like the much-praised dig­i­tal stop-motion Kubo and the Two Strings.) If you want to see how the mak­ers of “Asphyx­ia” cre­at­ed their exper­i­ment, watch their mak­ing-of film below.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Ani­ma­tions from Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch a 20-Year-Old Mikhail Baryshnikov Win Gold in One of His Earliest Performances (1969)

in Dance | November 1st, 2016

How well does Mikhail Barysh­nikov dance? The ques­tion answers itself, giv­en that the very word “Barysh­nikov” has come to sig­ni­fy the mas­tery of that art, and espe­cial­ly of male roles in bal­let. Yet there was once a time when no young dancer aspired to become the next Barysh­nikov, because even Barysh­nikov had­n’t yet become Barysh­nikov. Born in Latvia to a dress­mak­er moth­er and an engi­neer father, he began study­ing bal­let in 1960, at age eleven. Four years lat­er, he entered the Vagano­va Acad­e­my of Russ­ian Bal­let, from which he went on to win the ven­er­a­ble Var­na Inter­na­tion­al Bal­let Com­pe­ti­tion and, in 1967, join the Kirov Bal­let and Marin­sky The­ater.

The clip at the top of the post shows Barysh­nikov’s per­for­mance at the 1969 Moscow Inter­na­tion­al Bal­let Com­pe­ti­tion, from which he came out, along­side oth­er such soon-to-be big bal­let names as Nina Soroki­na and Mali­ka Sabiro­va, as a gold lau­re­ate.

“Barysh­nikov’s tech­nique is fault­less, his inter­pre­ta­tion mag­nif­i­cent,” says the announc­er as the still ten­der-aged dancer, just twen­ty years old, exe­cutes a solo from La Bayadère. The praise would, from that point on, keep on com­ing, and not just from the Sovi­et Union; around the same time, New York Times crit­ic Clive Barnes called Barysh­nikov “the most per­fect dancer I have ever seen.”

Yet for all his skill, Barysh­nikov did­n’t fit the tra­di­tion­al bal­let tem­plate: he lacked the height of oth­er famous male dancers, for one, and he also har­bored a desire to go beyond the bound­aries of 19th-cen­tu­ry dance and explore 20th-cen­tu­ry dance’s pos­si­bil­i­ties for inno­va­tion. His defec­tion from the Sovi­et Union in 1974 made it pos­si­ble for him to work with for­ward-think­ing chore­o­g­ra­phers like Alvin Ailey and Twyla Tharp, and to this day, in his mid-60s, he con­tin­ues push­ing his per­for­ma­tive bound­aries on the stage and the screen. Whether the 20-year-old dancer we see here could pos­si­bly have imag­ined such a future for him­self — a future involv­ing projects like his role on Sex and the City in the 2000s and his much-viewed video with Lil Buck for Rag & Bone last year — only Barysh­nikov knows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­let in Super Slow Motion

Bal­let Dancers Do Their Hard­est Moves in Slow Motion

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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