Loop Diver

Works

"DIGITAL RUPTURES: I find the play of repetition and variation fascinating, knowing that the smart, valiant dancers are making on-the-spot decisions that affect the texture, loving their attentiveness to one another and to what they're creating together.... It's as if these people are numbly replaying the embedded residue of crises. Their mechanical precision both undermines and sets off their humanness." – Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice

loopdiver

Available for Touring
(2009 - Lied Center for Performing Arts, Lincoln, Nebraska)

Choreography: Dawn Stoppiello in collaboration with the performers
Videography & Music: Mark Coniglio
Dramaturgy: Peter C von Salis
Lighting Design: David Tirosh
Set Design: Colin Kilian
Production Manager: Jennifer Sherburn

Performers: Morgan Cloud, Jennifer Kovacevich, Johanna Levy, Travis Steele Sisk, Dawn Stoppiello and Lucia Tong.

Commissioning Partners: Lied Center for Performing Arts, Creative Campus Innovations Program (APAP and Doris Duke Foundation), the National Endowment for the Arts, 3LD Art & Technology Center, Jerome Foundation, Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund.

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The development of loopdiver began with a simple idea: to explore the concept of loops, a structure pervasive in culture since the popularization of the computer. We first created a 6-minute long performance that was complete in its own right, with movement, music, video and theatrical lighting; then, using a special software tool, we transformed a videotape of that performance into a 60-minute long choreographic 'score' from which we rigorously generated the live choreography. While the digital materials (video, sound, light) maintain the absolute precision and perfection of the computer, the learned choreography is necessarily imperfect due to human interpretation. When placed together on stage, we see the performers in a constant struggle to adapt to an externally imposed machine rhythm. loopdiver asks the viewer to join in on this simultaneously dreamlike and maddening journey as the performers attempt to escape their prisons of repetition. The meaning of the materials grows and changes as it appears again and again, ultimately challenging us to dive in a break free of our own repetitive and potentially destructive behavior.