Post Edinburgh thoughts

Its always hard to figure out what to do next with a piece after a major festival/performance. I've been going back to the 'drawing board' and thinking of how this piece can develop. As a choreographer, sometimes I'm always looking for a way to reinvent a piece that I've created and put on a stage. With Habitat, I may go backwards in time to my original idea of mounting it in a gallery type setting or a white box theater. I also want to get the projections to shoot off the dancers' bodies as the light fragments on their bodies because its a metaphor for the person living in a world that feels like a sum of all worlds. Visually, I think this would look really exciting.
I'm rambling a bit from my thoughts... I will leave you with a documentary film that Laura Lamp edited and shot during the performance run titled "Dreaming to Escape"

Dreaming to Escape from Nesby Darbfeld on Vimeo.

The road to Edinburgh

Thank you to everyone that donated to the indiegogo campaign!

We raised $1,131 USD from the campaign* + an additional $500 SGD.

That's $1,914 SGD in total from private donations!

With grant money from Singapore International Foundation we are up to $5,914 SGD. A small stepping stone towards our total budget of $24,000 SGD to make it through the summer of performances in Edinburgh for our small cast of 4 + a stage manager.

If you missed out on our able to donate a small sum of money towards our goal, we would really appreciate it! You can click on the Paypal Donate button below.

*Indiegogo will be charging 9% fee for not making our fundraising goal of $1500 so we could use some help!


Many Thanks to Naheed Choudhry, Heather Cheung, Anonymous, Nicholas Fox, Gabrielle Lansner, Anonymous, Patricia Lee, Zhiying Lu, Julia Simens, Paoley Tjia, Judy Rickatson, Anonymous, EMCJ Holk van Eysinga, William Hebert, Centre Stage School of the Arts, Anonymous, Kyla Barkin, Anonymous, Annette Rahbek Floystrup, Lyna Ward, Media Generation!

Onto new adventures...

Its been eerily quiet on this blog for a number of reasons.
1) I moved halfway across the globe to Singapore
2) Haven't had time to think about the next steps of this piece because a) its not really finished b) I'm re-creating it to fit a traditional stage
3) Re-creating the piece

With that said... the past couple weeks, I've been re-envisioning this piece as vignettes of solos with group transitional segments.

Habitat is the space in which we live. Our personal space. The environment in which we confine ourselves to become our truest self. The quirks, neurosis, emotional highs and lows, habits, transformations, etc. What happens behind closed doors when we come into our physical home. What happens to the self when we leave, do we change the way we think, act, dress, interact with others...

I'm hoping this new way of looking at this piece will hone in on all the stuff we were creating the past year in the studio in New York. I'm not completely abandoning all that material. Just drawing upon this new revision and adding some of those material into the new stuff we've come up with.

Photo Credit: Laura Lamp

A.H. dance company will be performing and presenting our first public showing of "Habitat" - a multi-sensory dance installation during the FIGMENT Arts festival on June 9th from 12:30-1:30 pm at the Nolan Stage.

Lets have a picnic afterwards!


About Habitat:
A dance installation that examines how we coexist in the habitat(s) in which we live in and how we adjust to changes in our environs based on our senses, perception, and quality of life. By taking away one of our senses, we heighten the other senses and our perception changes. This multi-disciplinary dance installation will invite audience members to experience and be an active participant in the performance. Each audience participant will first be directed into the space blindfolded, as the piece unfolds, the blindfolds come off and they are directed to sit, lay down, stand in various configurations. By blurring the lines of performer and audience member each person involved will experience Habitat a little differently. This piece will be completed in the summer 2012 and ready for our premiere performance in the fall of 2012.


Photo Credit: Jene Youtt 


About FIGMENT arts festival
FIGMENT celebrates an abundance of creativity and passion, challenging artists and our communities to find new ways to create, share, think, and dream.
http://figmentproject.org/

Click here for directions to Governor's Island  

Habitat Project: Lauren's Tap sequence

This tap inspired sequence is performed in the perimeter of the audience members. Audience members are placed in a large circle facing in towards the center of the space. They experience the rhythms while viewing a Busby Berkeley inspired phrase done on the floor in the center of the space done by other dancers.

How well do you know your neighborhood?

I sent out my dancers on a mission to take pictures of a neighborhood that they are familiar with and unfamiliar with. I walked around my neighborhood and realized how much I don't know or notice when I walk around.

Here's the mission I sent my dancers out on:
1. Go to an area of the city that you're familiar with & take snapshots of people living their life. Try to capture their emotion, action, or something unique about how they are going about their day.
2. Go to an area of the city that you're not very familiar with & take snapshots of people living their life in that area. Try to capture their emotion, action, or something unique about how they are going about their day.

So my dear readers, I would like to challenge you to do the same. I'd love to see the pictures and include it in the Habitat Project (with your permission and you will be credited in the program of course!)


Photo Credit: Alaine Handa