With Partial View I got the chance to collaborate with John Jesurun, a theater and media artist whose work I’ve followed and admired since the early 1980’s. In the 1990’s I created choreography for his serial play, Chang in a Void Moon, in which my company appeared under the nom-de-danse “Baby Hokaido and Bunzel Dance Group.” For Partial View Jesurun and I worked together on the video concept and design.
For my part, I was expanding upon the work with video that I began in a commission for Ricochet Dance Theater in London in 2001, P.O.V., and continued with my Dance Theater Workshop premiere from 2003, Two. In both works I used live video projections to expand the stage space and provide an alternative text to the dance information, in much the same way I’ve sometimes used projected written text. Jesurun upped the ante further by providing pre-recorded images, which were mixed with the live video on two screens.
I was interested in how the juxtaposition of the live and the mediated might reveal something related to meaning-making. The title, too, points toward the incomplete and tentative nature of how we humans construct meaning. (Although I did hear that at least one audience member was quite miffed when they read “Partial View” on their ticket.)
The program also included partial view solo, which I performed as an introduction to Partial View.
Credits
Support
Purchase College Faculty Support Fund
Developed in part through a residency at Skidmore College
Press
Jennifer Dunning, New York Times
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice
Victoria Looseleaf, Los Angeles Times
Tresca Weinstein, Times Union, Albany
Don Daniels, Ballet Review
Additional Links