April 23 & here, 2007
performer, pre-recorded and live mixed video
5″
12 Solos, Toronto Dance Theatre
Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto
May 23-26, 2007
April 23 & here included live video mixed with Jitter software. The pre-recorded video was a stationary shot of the Twelve Mile Creek in St. Catharines shot on April 23. Each night of the show, I shot a short clip of the audience entering the theatre. During the performance, I mixed the pre-recorded video with the shot of the audience and live video I was shooting of Louis from the mezzanine of the theatre. The audio was a mix of the pre-recorded video audiotrack with a voiceover of my own speaking voice.
I was playing with time and space, those quintessential aspects of performance. The specificity of the image of April 23 (which could have been any day), the moment by moment of live performance and the slightly delayed image of the moment before form the visuals. The sparse movement vocabulary was shaped from improvisations based on instructions to Louis such as responding to sounds he heard in the studio layered with an awareness of the performing space and the audience (as well as a fondness for long balances). The text was written with commentary on details of sound and sight in the pre-recorded videotape, comments drawn from an interview with Louis about performing and compassionate fiction about the audience’s private lives. I hoped to create a gentle atmosphere in which the audience felt aware of one another’s shared experience in the theatre of bodies sitting in darkness watching time and space shifting and a wonderful dancer, Louis.
Choreography, text, pre-recorded video & mix: Elizabeth Chitty
Dancer: Louis Laberge-Côté
Audio recording: Luke Harley
Lighting Design: Gabriel Cropley
Jitter programming: Jeun Lee & Matt Menzies
Artistic Director Christopher House commissioned 12 artists to create solos for the dancers of the company. The other artists commissioned for 12 Solos were: Carol Anderson, Marie-Josée Chartier, Robert Glumbek, Eda Holmes, Hari Krishnan, Matjash Mrozewski, Yvonne Ng, John Oswald, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Holly Small and Lex Vaughn.