I had the fortunate experience of joining an incredible team to create visuals for several scenes of the 65 minute ballet choreographed by Guillaume Cote (credits below). Having seen his beautiful work for Frame x Frame with Robert LePage, which explored art, light, & projections with dance, I was very much inspired to be apart of this project.
The mannequin in the center frame represents the dancer’s placement on stage as the projection is in front of the stage — allowing our hero to be within the frame. In this scene our hero goes on an arduous search, plagued with inner turmoil.
Five minutes of tightly choreographed visuals allow interplay between projections, the dancer and stage. We open on Lily Le’s beautiful haunted forest illustrations, move sideways through a storm of internal conflict, before falling through Alice’s rabbit hole, the universe’s stars aligning and into a new day.
I found this scene striking as it opened up sincere, character-driven, motion-design dialogue between Guillaume Cote (Choreographer) and myself. It’s a physically challenging sequence for our hero to be on stage solo for 5+ minutes and the visuals must compliment the performance without overstepping the beauty of our Hero’s dance.
The collaborative design process involved reviewing raw choreography footage to come up with ideas dancers could react to, followed by additional discussion, exploration, and animatics before moving forward with final animations.
Pre-launch Promo Video:
Additional Links:
https://nac-cna.ca/en/creationfund/project/crypto
Instagram - Cote Danse