Imagining Otherwise

A collaboration between Dr Nic Sandiland as digital artist and Dr Yael Flexer as choreographer together with company dancers. Imagining Otherwise is an immersive interactive digital dance work for five dancers. It reflects on our experiences of parallel time zones, places and lives; exploring the idea of multiple stories and possibilities, inspired by Doreen Massey’s writing on space ‘space is the dimension of things being, existing at the same time: of simultaneity’ (Massey, 2013:1).

The work is performed within a digital environment projection-mapped onto a 10m x 6m dance floor. Imagery is derived from a number of topographical sources including:

• Digital height maps, displaying the relative heights of terrain features minus socio-political defined borders.
• Real-time traces, created by the dancers as they travel across the stage, evoking a sense of spatial-history or actions in the recent past.
• Real-time disruption of familiar geographical boundaries by dancers’ motion.

These techniques aim to highlight notions of migration, transience, mark-making and erasure. They are amplified by spoken text written by Wendy Houstoun emphasising a sense of dislocation and deterritorialized identities (Harroway 1990) also echoing the lived experience of some of the professional dancers in the work.

The research examined notions of sensuous or ‘felt’ geographies’ and ‘kinaesthtic encounter’ (Rubidge 2014:27) developing a somatically responsive improvisational choreographic methodology. The research drew on contact improviser and dance theorist Nita Little notions of improvisation as ‘a bodymind environment [and] ecology in motion’ (Little 2014:251) as well as dance theorist and practitioner Vida Midgelow’s consideration of Bridotti’s nomadism in the context of improvisational dance which frequently employs images and terms referencing geography, terrains, journeys and connectivities embodying nomadic concepts (Midgelow 2012:1).

Concept: Nic Sandiland & Yael Flexer

Interactive and visual design: Nic Sandiland

Choreography: Yael Flexer & the performers including original cast (Julie-Ann Minaai & Cher Nicolette-Ho)

Rehearsal Director: Julie-Ann Minnai

Performers: Luke Birch, Lorna Cross Clark, Gabrielle MacAllistair, Andrea Madore, Corrie McKenzie, Yael Flexer

Writing: Wendy Houstoun

Music: James Keane

Text direction: Pete Phillips

Lighting Design:

Production management: Natalie Rowland

Costume Design: Rosalind Noctor

Producer: Lou Rogers & Madeline Wilson

Funding & in-kind support: Arts Council England, South East Dance, University of Stavanger, Norway, Hull Dance & The Universities of Chichester & Middlesex