I had the pleasure of interviewing Loganne Bond – an Ohio-native, OSU dance alum, and a professional dancer – for my Global Dance Community project. With my partner, Maxi Riley, we interviewed Loganne about her life and career, and from the information we gathered, gave a presentation to the freshman class with useful information about pursuing dance as a career.
For this most recent comp study, we were assigned to create a site-specific work chosen anywhere on the Ohio State University’s campus.
This project of creating my short documentary was a level up from the last project of making my dance film with the goal to gather some information and share it via film. Finding my topic and obtaining the information was the easier portion of the project; tattoos are such an interesting topic to me and immediately came to me as my topic idea. Then all it took was a little searching and asking around to find someone to be the subject of my film. I thought of a few questions and filmed an interview with my person.
For our second assignment in Composition, we were assigned to take a trip down to the Columbus Museum of Art and find either a portrait, abstract painting, or sculpture to create our study off of. Of all the wonderful works of art, there was one that I knew immediately that I wanted to base my study on – “Kin V (Thou Dark One)” by Whitfield Lowell.
We are working with dance in a new medium in freshman seminar – film – and with that comes the freedom of creating works that cannot be performed on a regular stage in real time. In my dance film, a second third, I played with tempo and speed of movement to create an illusion of dancer Hazel Black moving at a normal speed while her background has seemed to be moving at extreme speed.
My Moving Space project, titled Stairwork, is a collaborative dance installation residing on the stairwell of the rotunda in Sullivant Hall created by Hazel Black, Lisa D’Onofrio, Grace Robinson, Brianna Rhodes, and myself. This location, upon of first learning about the project, was one of the first that came to mind of wanting to choreograph into the space. Oddly enough, that was what most of my group members had admitted to as well, therefore it was easy to come to a unanimous decision on the location. I believe that the stairwell appealed so much to me because there are various planes for movement to be performed on. Compared to a typical place where dances are performed – otherwise known as a stage – the stair well allowed us to use the landing, each step, and even the railings as platforms for our movement. The stairwell was also a great structure to draw inspiration for movement. For example, traffic on a stairwell typically flows from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top and our piece demonstrated that by dancers coming into the space from the top steps and exiting at the bottom. Inspiration was also taken from the architecture of the stairwell: there were many geometrical patterns seen in the stairs, the landing, and railings, and that translated into many shapes and patterns that can be seen in the movement.
Continue reading Moving Space – Stairwork
A collection of journals from my fall semester Contemporary dance class and a video of the showcase from the last day of classes.
Oct. 11 – Body Organization
I am a very structured person: I prefer math and ballet, lines and maps, and knowing that an ‘x’ will always yield a ‘y’. The Bartenieff Fundamentals taught in this contemporary class seemed to be just the opposite of everything that I knew and loved; it, at first, looked like a free-for-all on the floor, and I knew that it would be a challenge to execute all of the movements correctly. Entering this contemporary class was like entering a stage of entropy, and the only thing that my mind wanted to do was create order.
I am currently working with MFA student Kristina D’Onofrio as a second cast and understudy for her piece to be performed for this year’s Winter Concert. The process for the piece started about a month ago, however I just recently got asked to join rehearsals. As of today, I have completed my second rehearsal. While I find that the piece concept and movement are interesting, I also find that the creative process, while enjoyable, is slightly frustrating to me. Continue reading as part of a creative process
Marissa Thomas 