04 September 2010
Paris Journal: Entry 3
9/3
If one is to really work seriously and mindfully with a (video) camera, it has to be something about how one sees or casts one’s vision onto things. The “eye” of the camera: does it “will” or dominate what is to be seen? How naïve to think the camera can stand in for or mimic the fleeting, fitful improvisation of the actual gaze. But then…
29 August 2010
Paris Journal: l Entry 2
8/29/10
What new rhythms await me? Can I shed the habitual responses to originate a new response to a new set of tensions? In her chapter on “Time” from Poetics of Contemporary Dance, Laurence Louppe states:
An accent or release between a tension and counter-tension within the body, however, is never a break but rather always a transition.…
29 August 2010
Paris Journal: l Entry 2
8/29/10
What new rhythms await me? Can I shed the habitual responses to originate a new response to a new set of tensions? In her chapter on “Time” from Poetics of Contemporary Dance, Laurence Louppe states:
An accent or release between a tension and counter-tension within the body, however, is never a break but rather always a transition.…
29 August 2010
Paris Journal: l Entry 2
8/29/10
What new rhythms await me? Can I shed the habitual responses to originate a new response to a new set of tensions? In her chapter on “Time” from Poetics of Contemporary Dance, Laurence Louppe states:
An accent or release between a tension and counter-tension within the body, however, is never a break but rather always a transition.…
23 August 2010
Videocartepostales de Paris
Paris Journal –Peter Sparling
8/6/10 Ann Arbor, MI. In anticipation of my upcoming 4-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts...
I’m walking across the playground at dusk, when these thoughts come to me. I speak this into my cell phone, leaving this message (or the gist of it) on the answering machine of my home phone to retrieve…
21 August 2010
Naked Came I/Eye: Lights, Camera and the Ultimate Spectacle
I recently presented this paper the annual Society of Dance History Scholars conference at University of Surrey in Guildford, England. This year's theme was "Dance and Spectacle".
My presentation was one of the few by a working artist about his own work. My challenges: How do I look back upon my own work and place it under various theoretical…
21 August 2010
An Experiment in 3-D Motion Capture
The U-M Digital Media Commons is a playground for research in technologies that record, reveal, enhance and/or recreate movement of the human body.
This video captures a moment during a recent "play session" when a group of high school students walked in to the Video Studio while I was improvising in my motion capture body suit.
…
22 May 2010
The “i” Word
A student in my Screendance course, Helen Zhang, has created a wonderful video that surveys the interdisciplinary (the "i" word) work of a handful of professors at U-M.
Check it out at http://youtube.com/watch?v=c7iO7qXoyUk
01 April 2010
Mid-States Regional Ballet Festival
Presented by Michigan's own Ballet Americana located in Taylor, MI, this festival features master classes, adjudications and performances. I will teach six master classes in Contemporary Dance April 29-May 1. See website: http://balletamericana.org/
01 April 2010
To Paris!
I will be in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris September 3-December 27, 2010. While part of an international community of 270 artists, i will present my work, continue to make screendances, develop The Bodytalk Template, a comparative, intercultural study of male dance improvisers, and write about European dance for Ballet…
16 November 2009
Ethics on Teaching Dance
On a2ethics.org,celebrated dancers and teachers of their art, Peter Sparling and Sheila Graziano, join Bart and Jeanine in a fascinating two-part discussion on the ethics of teaching dance. Their discussions are as kinetically intelligent as dance itself. Among the topics we moved in and out of, to and from, as well as back and forth: the…
15 November 2009
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Guest Artist Series
14 November 2009
Photoformance: An Empathic Environment (IN PROGRESS)
This collaboration features Ernestine Ruben, photographer, Peter Sparling, choreographer/video artist, Monica Ponce de Leon, architect, and Erik Santos, composer, and will culminate in a gallery installation at University of Michigan Museum of Art involving video projections onto an architectural environment. Check out our temporary website for…
14 November 2009
The Gallery Project’s “Capturing Motion”, Nov. 4-Dec. 6, 2009
My screendance, SIDE B, is part of this stimulating and very kinetic show at our excellent "local" art gallery in Ann Arbor. See link.
14 November 2009
InShadow 1st Internacional Festival of Video, Performance and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal
Two of my screendances —Babel and SIDE B— were selected for screening at this festival, taking place Nov. 24-26 at Lisbon's Theatro Sao Luiz. See link.