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Bebe Miller brings Landing/Place to Campus
Ohio State dance professor and choreographer Bebe Miller and her New York company will perform Landing/Place at Thurber Theatre, Drake Performance Center, at 8 pm Sept 30 and Oct 1. The event is the culmination of two creative residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts and extensive work at OSU’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). Landing/Place combines Miller’s rich, sensuous choreography with layers of projected imagery derived from motion-capture technology and computer animation—using the resources at ACCAD—as well as spoken word and live music by composer Albert Mathias. Inspired by a trip to Eritrea, in North Africa, Landing/Place explores cultural dislocation, our feelings about being home and away, and our sense of place in a global human landscape. The Columbus performances are presented by the Wexner Center for the Arts, and are part of an extensive U.S. tour as Bebe Miller Company celebrates its 20th anniversary season this year.
Harnessing the resources at a research university
As part of the creative development of this piece, Miller’s company worked with Ohio State dance students and used state-of-the-art digital technology at ACCAD’s Motion Capture Lab. Motion capture technology records every movement of a subject, giving animators a number of invisible moving points. These virtual points act as “hooks” to which imagery is attached with virtual strings, making this type of animation process very similar to one of a puppeteer driving a marionette. Resulting animations are projected onto screens simultaneously with the live performance.
Maria Palazzi, director of ACCAD, says, “As researchers, we learn a great deal from working with Bebe and her company. They pushed our motion capture system’s capabilities to its limits with the number of dancers being captured at one time. The animation sequences created for projection are innovative and visually rich, and function as a complement to the choreography.”
Along with Miller as artistic director, the creative team includes: her five company dancers Kathleen Fisher, Angie Hauser, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Darrell Jones, and David Thomson; dramaturg Talvin Wilks; composer Albert Mathias; ACCAD animator Vita Berezina-Blackburn; digital consultant Scott deLahunta; and video artist Maya Ciarrocchi. Excerpts from Landing/Place as a work-in-progress were presented at the Wexner Center in the fall of 2004.
Landing/Place was developed with support from the creative residency program of the Wexner Center for the Arts, and support from the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and the College of the Arts. The creation of the work is supported through commissioning funds from Danspace Project’s 2003-2004 Commissioning Initiative and the Bates Dance Festival.
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Landing/Place
Fri Sept 30 – Sat Oct 1 • 8 pm
Thurber Theatre, Drake Performance Center
Tickets are $16 for the general public,
$13 Wexner Center members,
$10 for students ($5 High 5 tickets for teens),
available at the Wexner Center box office (292-3535) and Ticketmaster (431-3600). |
Bebe Miller
photo credit: Lois Greenfield |
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