****** SONGS FOR THE BODY ELECTRIC ******
A Hi-Tech Performance of Electronic Music, Acrobatic Dancing, and Video
Gerry Girouard, Dance and Choreography
Todd Winkler, Electronic Music and Programming
Stephen Rueff, Lighting Design and Video
Jennifer Holt, Dance
Thursday - Sunday , April 23 - 26 8pm $10
Carriage House Theatre - 7 Duncan Avenue - Providence, Rhode Island
For information and ticket reservations call the Carriage House Theatre
401-831-9479
RELATED EVENTS
Special Matinee for Children - Sunday , April 26 2 pm $5
Excerpts from Songs for the Body Electric, and a chance for kids to join
the dancers on stage for a fun time "playing" music by moving!
Free Public Lecture and Demonstration/Workshop with the Artists
Friday, April 24 3 - 5pm Grant Auditorium Brown University (call
863-3234 for information)
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DESCRIPTION
Songs for the Body Electric takes the audience on a hi-tech adventure with
the help of a digital motion sensing system which plays electronic music
in direct response to physical movement and changes in light. On-stage
video cameras are fed to the Very Nervous System, a device created by David
Rokeby, which reports changes in the video image to a computer. Winkler's
interactive software transforms dancers into musical instruments, with
spatial location and speed generating sound. The musical output is designed
to reflects many of the subtle changes of human movement. The interactive
feedback process requires dancers to listen and respond to the music which
they create.
Gerry Girouard's acrobatic movements challenge perceptions of space and
gravity, with dancers walking on the walls, ceiling and each other for
extended periods of time in a controlled manner, blurring the visual
orientation of up and down. Live and recorded video images are projected in
a variety of ways to further challenge and reinforce the illusions created
by the wall waking dancers. All of the visual elements on stage are fed,
via video camera, to Winkler's interactive system, with vertical and
horizontal spaces triggering different musical responses. Audience members
will be invited to "play" their own music by moving around the stage after
the show.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Stephen Rueff, Lighting and Video Design
Stephen Rueff has been resident designer at New York's Kitchen Theater,
Franklin Furnace, Performance Space 122, and Nuyoricans Poets Cafe. He has
toured nationally and internationally as the production manager and/or
lighting designer for Meredith Monk, Karen Finley, Phillip Glass, Diamanda
Galas, Reno, Elizabeth Streb, The Blue Man Group, Doug Varone, and others.
He has produced videos for Minnesota AIDS Project, German television, and
an award-winning documentary for Minneapolis Television Network.
Gerry Girouard, Dancer and Choreographer
Gerry Girouard is a choreographer, gymnast, and practitioner of the
Afro-Brazilian martial art copoeira. He danced with the Nancy Hauser Dance
Company for eight years and since 1992 has produced several of his own
shows. He has been awarded the Minnesota Arts Board Dance Fellowship, a
McKnight Choreographers Fellowship, and a grant from the Gerome Foundation.
Todd Winkler, Composer and Programmer
Todd Winkler is a composer and professor at Brown University, where he
directs the MacColl Studio for Electronic Music and teaches courses in
computer music and multimedia. He is the author of Composing Interactive
Music, a book about the theory and technology of interactive music and
performance, published by MIT Press. Winkler's computer works for
instruments, installation, and dance have toured internationally at such
venues as Darmstadt Festival in Germany, New Music America Festival in New
York, Monday Evening Concert Series in Los Angeles, and Contemporary Music
Festivals in Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Australia, Canada and
Scotland. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts,
the American Composers Forum, the Arizona State University Center for
Studies in the Arts, Meet the Composer, Fulbright, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and ASCAP.