Here[begin] Dance

Interpretive Alien Dance

misthical — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:01:12 +0000

Alien is Annie Wilson
Interpreter is Mason Rosenthal.

Contrasting dance – phrasing improvisation

misthical — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:14:57 +0000

This is a solo rehearsal improvisation – mining to different qualities of movement, practicing fast shifts of quality and looking for meaning in different gestures or even using different styles of dance.

I’m still looking to name this approach, but for now I call the the full out dance approach.
We are exploring similar techniques in the group rehearsals and experimenting with communication, image and recognizability.

Solo practice – shape-shifting, presence and contrasting emotions

misthical — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:04:13 +0000

I’ve been keeping this blog for over a year now and while it all started with me simply dancing to music and asking a question “why does my choreography looks nothing like my dancing?” now the question has changed and shifted more to “How can I put my choreographic interests into my improvisation?”

This is just one aspect of my recent research in performing presence.

What you see is a mixture of different techniques and approaches to this solo work.

Below is an exploration in performance. Highly physical approach to shifting presence and exploring emotional states. I allow my body to lead me into a distorted shape that evokes meaning/image/emotion in me which then I follow. I try to shift fast and look for contrasting physical qualities and strong and evocative images.

I also edited the original sound… can you believe that I’m actually dancing to Madonna’s “American Pie” song? It was too distracting to watch though, that’s why I took it out.

Workshopping it

misthical — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:07:02 +0000

In January 2012 me(Zornitsa Stoyanova) and fellow performers got together into researching some ideas about dance, presence, and performance.

Here are some of the video we created.

Group Improv for the camera

Improv exercise in presence with Mason and Christina

Slow Creature dying. I find this incredibly beautiful.

Snow gloves and Rihanna

misthical — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:15:20 +0000

This is actually quite funny… or at least I think so.

I am dancing in my sneakers ( I haven’t done that really in this video blog series) and also using my snow gloves as a prop.

Long improv with camera from above

misthical — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:10:24 +0000

So, I’ve been really interested in this new vantage point. So in mid December decided to try and see what I can do with a long form improv… Its funny. At one point the little magnetic lens starts sliding off of the camera and your view port becomes smaller and smaller, until it falls on me. I’m interested in these kind of optical change of events.
Here is the actual video.

Hooray… its 2012!

From above

misthical — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:34:45 +0000

This is an entry from Dec. 6th, 2011.
For the first time ever I’m using overhead camera… I’m excited about the ways in which it transforms shape and size. I hope to play more with this and the specific parameters of it in detail.

It turns out that it is way harder to be right at the dead down center of the camera.

One year of Video Blog

misthical — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:01:08 +0000

Wow, its December 1st and its officially been a year since I started recording myself improvising. The big question is what now. Well first and foremost I will sit and watch all of the videos attentively and pick and chose choreography that I feel is interesting or resonates some deeper interest.

In general I think in the past year I have gotten way more interested in working with video angles. I understand dancing for the camera much better and am really conscious of that invisible audience member. A year ago I started this project thinking that I will know more about my phrasing and the way I create and place movement next to each other…. Well, I guess I need to watch all the videos to really see the difference.

Here is what I recorded this morning.

Music is my favorite glitch-y Alva Noto

This is take two.
My goal of this was to record the 3 moves at the beginning as a piece of choreography and then move continuously with the hope that I can find something to re-learn.
I think the background music is fever ray… but I found myself listening to european techno/pop music and watching it and it was actually awesome. I’m seriously reconsidering taking the video down and putting over that music on top.

getting back to dancing for the camera

misthical — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:16:53 +0000

On Monday after almost 3 months away from Mascher Space cooperative I finally got a solo rehearsal in the space. It has been a long time since I last recorded myself dancing or really did free improvisation form… so I was desperately looking for an anchor. I didn’t trust my body and my movement to give to me, so I decided to do a study on perspective. I can’t believe its taken me almost a year to even come up think about this as a possibility.
I tilted the camera sideways and tried playing with that idea… however you will notice my funny mistake. I’m dancing thinking that the image in the camera is actually tilted the other way. also seeing my body straight in the frame really makes your brain fix the perspective and you start watching it as if the horizon line is actually straight.

Needless to say, I’m much more interested in the perspective implications here and not so much the movement. I imagine being able to manipulate the perspective in improvisation while the camera is moving… So more to come from this type of idea, I’m sure…

Dancing at UCLA – improv while rehearsing for the Elephant piece

misthical — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:30:14 +0000

This was the first time I improvised for the camera since I came back to the U.S. after spending a month in Bulgaria and Romania, where i attended Sofia Dance Festival and the eXpolre Dance Festival in Bucharest, RO. Well, I also got to see my family in Bulgaria and partied with my sister, who is a freshman in college…

So, lots of experiences that deserve a whole different entry.

I don’t know if it was all the European dance I saw or the fact that I was rehearsing with Lionel Popkin in L.A. (of all places), but I realized that all these videos have some strange narrative to them.

I usually veer away from narrative, but this time I was really interested in framing the space in ways that created some goal oriented tasks.

I am becoming more and more interested in using the camera angles it its fullest potential.