Setup considerations

Today in comp we talked a lot about my structures and how to implement that.

First of all, what they should be made of is a subject to consider. The acting blocks are well-used and recognized in the department, and with the shapes I put them in, they're pretty cumbersome and impractical for setting up during a show. I want to look into other possible materials. Maybe paper, foam, wood structures of some sort... At the moment I'm leaning towards some fabric option. I'm thinking curtains with cutouts either giving full view, or with a sheer fabric obscuring it somewhat. The loss with many of these options is the lack of structural integrity, which changes the opportunities available to my dancers in using them to play off of. They've been letting the blocks bear their weight, which I enjoyed, but maybe a softer material could give other opportunities, or I could find a suitable sturdy form.

We also discussed the black color of the blocks- some felt it's just getting old, but I need to consider my purposes. I want them to represent loss of information, and on a black background I think black would achieve that. In another setting, that's trickier. (Random poll, when asked my roommate says the color of "missing information" would be blue, because it seems sad. Noted.) I thought maybe different colors and fading them away could carry in the idea of information that gets lost. Or white, since it truly does not hold color information- though it does grant the information of shadows... which could be advantageous in cueing audience curiosity in what's hidden - or revealing where I may not want to be.

We also talked about setting. There was brought up the possibility of making my piece an installment as an environment, even one which the audience could even walk though approaching the showings. This would allow me to have a more elaborate setup without so much consideration to stage crew handling concerns. I think I would miss lighting opportunities in a stageless installment, and it would make more optional my idea of using a video camera to show the piece from its perimeters.

Other interesting points about the environment included the amount of information that some audience members got when they looked in the mirrors in the studio we showed in- they saw tons more of the piece. I think I want the audience to just wonder what's behind the blocks and not be able to have that answer. Or, I can think of it as offering a different perspective- which I do seek to include- that could be an alternative to using the video camera to show the other angles (though it lacks the technological touch and range of view of the latter). I think I prefer the video option here- it gives more points of perspective.

I was also interested that one of the other dancers saw the structures of my blocks as an exploded particle... They definitely saw negative and positive space, and even characterized the block structures as a Chinese screen or coral reef.