UNSCENE - 2 Hours

Artistic Direction and Production Design: Joel Mejia Smith

Choreography and Performance by Alfonso Cervera, Rainy Demerson, Rebeca Hernandez Fajardo, Patricia (Patty) Huerta, Stephanie Y Jolivet, Hyoin Jun, Maiko Le Lay, Joel Mejia Smith, and Maggie Sniffen.

Video Art and Projection: Jungwon Ahn

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Premiered at Culver Center of the Arts, Riverside, CA. November, 15, 2016

 

UNSCENE, a site-specific immersive dance-theater spectacle for which I was Artistic Director and Production Designer, was presented at Culver Center of the Arts, fall 2015. UNSCENE was the culmination of a 10-week residency at Culver that I developed for my graduate course DNCE 242: Collaborating in Dance Making. In dialogue with my ongoing research on improvisational scoring and concepts of looping, students developed their own work in different spaces at Culver and in critical response to the SECOND WAVE: Aesthetics of the 80s in Today’s Contemporary Art exhibition, installed at the time.  Each collaborating artist in UNSCENE was tasked with creating their own 30-minute interdisciplinary performance score, to be looped four times over the course of the evening (2 hours total), and that specifically interacted with one another and with different parts of the building. Duets, trios and group interactions were developed in the stairwells, black box, studios and along the balcony. Multiple shared and overlapping moments from each artist’s 30-minute dance were visible to audiences as they navigated the Culver Center's unique architecture and spatial possibilities. Thus, an important objective for UNSCENE was to disrupt the traditional audience viewer relationship. In addition, because each time-based loop started and ended at the same time, which provided audiences non-linear readings of the work depending on where they were spatially and contextually within each 30-minute loop, the concept of time and duration were an important component of the overall experience. Each artist explored themes of eroticism, displacement, nudity/flesh, and urbanization to reflect themes from the SECOND WAVE exhibition. As Artistic Director and Production Designer, I facilitated the transformation of the multiple spaces, including installing over a thousand feet of 3' wide rolled craft paper around the pillars in the Atrium. I also designed the Brithinee Studio with rope light, projection, plastic flooring, and hand portable lighting devices. I also provided important feedback to the other artists about how they might engage with each space. As part of UNSCENE I created my own 30-minute solo called Loop(ed).

 

 

Loop(ed) - 30 Minutes

Choreographed and Performed by Joel Mejia Smith

Production Design: Joel Mejia Smith

Video Art and Projection: Joel Mejia Smith

Text: Joel Mejia Smith

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Premiered at Culver Center of the Arts, Riverside, CA. November, 15, 2016

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Loop(ed) is container for various improvisational scores I have been developing/practicing as a solo dancer, and that interact with digital media and reveal choreographic strategies often unseen by audiences. For example, while improvising a one-minute dance in a 5 x 5 square, I use an iPad app called Loopy HD (commonly used by beat boxers and musicians) to record my voice describing my dancing –while I’m dancing, in order to help me remember/practice what I just danced. The recording loops back immediately, and records another layer of information (instead of beats, I layer more descriptions of my improv). The construction and practice of these improvisations allows audience members access into my process. Because themes in UNSCENE explore the unseen in performance, and because my research surrounds queer performativity and the male body, I took my clothed one-minute dance (constructed downstairs and very public) upstairs to the Brithinee closet (also 5 x 5) for a more ‘private’ nude ‘performance’ for those who were following my immersive path. Both spaces emphasize the relationship between the un/clothed, private/public body. Loop(ed) is also a platform for my digital video research. I record and project an improvisation on a wall (in this case the Brithinee Studio), then project that (a reprint of my improv) on the same wall while recording a new improvisation, this time capturing both the projected and live dancing. This mode of improvise/record/project/repeat was used to construct a 10-minute film that had four versions of myself dancing. In UNSCENE/Loop(ed) the 10-minute improvisational score (and therefor film with four selves) included me dancing while undressing to create cohesion with the one-minute dances I created with the looping app. Here I danced with the 10-minute film and became the 5th layer.

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Supporting Documentation From This Review Period

Listing: Culver Center of the Arts in Riverside, CA

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Loop(d) - Excerpt

password: looped

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Note about work sample: The videographer was roaming the two-story building where multiple works were being performed. He was able to capture the room I had installed and where the majority of my solo was performed and where my film was being projected. For the first couple of minutes of this sample I am still downstairs dancing, which was unfortunately not captured.