Contemporary dancers create original choreography, music based on artwork in the IU Art Museum

As students in the Contemporary Dance Program prepared to present a class project to an audience of a few dozen, sunlight shone through the IU Art Museum windows and cast harsh shadows over the atrium floor.

“Moving Images,” a project partially funded by IU Arts Week Everywhere, challenged students in professor Elizabeth Shea’s course to create dance duets based on artwork in the IU Art Museum.

“This course is very different from your typical lecture class,” said Shea, coordinator of the Contemporary Dance Program. “And I see myself as a facilitator in the process, not the choreographer. I don’t want to see my work on other dancers.”

Students were required to select works from the 20th Century Collection on the first floor of the Art Museum and work in pairs to create fully choreographed routines, including selecting the music, based on the physical, cognitive and emotive characteristics of the chosen artwork.

Students chose artwork ranging from photography to sculpture and made use of sound from silence to music with upbeat jazz tracks.

The project was more about the creative process than the final result, Shea said.

“But it just worked out that in this case, the result was great, as well,” she said.

After the performances, each duet pair stood by its selected piece of artwork to speak about its creative approach and inspiration.

“Corrosio” Annie Ellis and Jingze Harry Wange
Artwork “Semaforo” by Arnaldo Pomodoro
Music “Land’s End” by Terry Riley

Ellis and Wange were inspired by a metal sculpture that looked like it had been corroded on the side.

“We picked this sculpture because we really liked the raw emotion of it,” Ellis said. “The abandonment and the erosion.”

Wange agreed.

“We compared it to the way technology is eroding society,” he said.

Wange said his favorite part of the collaboration was working with another
dancer.

“There wasn’t one time when one of us was dictating the other,” he said. “We were just so in sync.”

“Portrait of Space” Kate Anderson and Eryn Blair
Artwork “Portrait of Space” by Lee Miller and “Dorothea Tanning” by Max Ernst
Music “Fear of the South” by Tin Hat Trio

Kate and Eryn said they were both immediately intrigued by the two photographs and began discussing their reactions.

“We chose to focus on the idea of depth because we found it was prevalent in both photographs,” Blair said. “There’s both a physical and more figurative depth. Spatially, there is depth in the landscape of both images and also between the two figures in the foreground and background.

“There’s also a depth that exists in the relationship between the two figures. We created the depth in our duet by the way we arranged ourselves on stage and through the way we interacted with each other.”

Anderson said the music the pair chose for its routine was also inspired by the landscape in the portraits.

“We chose the accompaniment because it was as vast as the landscape,” Anderson said. “While it had an even tempo, there was room to play with timing or speed.”

“Aided Entrapment” Shannon Kazan and Tyrese Franklin
Artwork “Volcano 54” by Aaron Siskind
Music  “Calming the Sea” by Ghostland

Kazan and Franklin said their project came together during the last minute while they were under pressure. The two of them had a hard time getting together to collaborate due to sickness.

Once they chose a painting, they discussed what the ambiguous nature and texture of the painting represented to them.

“Sometimes you build yourself up only to get knocked down, but you have friends there to help you,” Kazan said. “We tried to represent that in our performance.”

Franklin said he originally planned to make his own music, but deadlines snuck up on him. By the time they were required to present their accompaniment to the class, Kazan and Franklin still hadn’t found the right piece.

“I got on YouTube and looked up ‘Calming the Sea,’ and we fell in love with it,” Franklin said. “It’s emotional but still soft.”

“Dissipate” Annamarie Bustion and Kim Fahnestock
Artwork “Portrait of Lisa Begelow” by Alfred Leslie
Music “Shakka” by Amiina and “Elements — Fire” by Anand Dixit

Bustion and Fahnestock said they were most inspired by the story behind the painting. There was a fire in Alfred Leslie’s studio, and the portrait of his soon-to-be ex-wife was the only painting to survive.

“Since it is such a minimalist painting, we chose a minimalist band from Iceland as the music,” Bustion said. “It starts with the sound of fire crackling, and it then blends into the music, and it also ends with fire crackling.”

Fahnestock said the pair also chose a poem about fire to accompany the dance.
“Our approach was just to be really in your face about the theme,” she said.

“Lightning Lipstick” Alejandro Fonseca and Arika Casey
Artwork  “Lighting Lipstick” by Robert Colescott
Performed in silence

The duet chose to perform their routine in silence. As they danced, even the rotating door to the Art Museum was loud enough to distract the audience.

Casey said the duet was inspired by the concept and culture of the piece.

“There is so much going on in the painting, and we portrayed that with our routine,” she said.

Fonseca said the hardest part of the project was the time frame the duets were required to work within. He said each group only had four or five hours in class to create its routine.

“A Polite Departure” Leslie Bush and Drew Phillips
Artwork “The Uncle Say: About Next Day the Neighbors Come to Wish ’em Well” by Howard Chandler Christy
Music  “In the White of Silence: F” by John Luther Adams

Bush said the pair was drawn to Howard Chandler Christy’s painting because of the story behind it. The painting portrays a woman who has eloped as her family and friends come to scold her.

For inspiration, the pair thought about what happened to the subject of the painting before the captured moment — particularly the romance that led to the
elopement.

“The dance portrays having forces work against you when you’re together with someone,” Bush said.

A recurring them in the duet’s performance was using their hands under their chins.

“In the time era of the drawing, a hand under the chin represented doing what you’re supposed to in the eyes of society,” Bush said. “And we kind of built on that.”

“Chasing Feathers” Amanda Leemis and Rebecca Newbrough
Artwork  “Turkey Feathers” by Keith Carter
Music “The Optimist” by Zoe Keating

Leemis and Newbrough said they were attracted more to photographs than to paintings or sculptures, and they found one that had the right amount of spacial awareness.

The photograph features a young boy pausing to think with feathers in his pocket.

“We could have interpreted the photograph to be very serious, but he could have been pausing to catch his breath,” Leemis said.

Instead, the duet focused on the childish aspect of the photograph.

“We incorporated the hide-and-seek theme with the back-and-forth movement in our dance. We also considered the blurriness of the photograph,” Newbrough said.

“Dinner of Fools”  Aquanita Yancy and Ryan Galloway
Artwork “Business Lunch” by Jean Debuffet
Music “Ete Mate” by Wadasse Band African

Yancy and Galloway’s performance stood out from the rest — as the duet took the floor with Magic Marker mustaches, members of the audience tried to stifle their laughter.

But although the dance was supposed to be sillier than the others, Yancy said there were still serious themes behind it.

“When we first saw the piece, we just thought it was funny, but we found more satire than we expected when we read into it more,” Yancy said.

The dance required props — two dinner tables and chairs. The duet sat at the tables for part of the dance and moved around the floor for the others.

“At the tables, it was kind of a pretend situation,” Galloway said. “But when we moved away from the tables, we tried to portray how society views us as mentally ill.”