Routine ideas

Pun intended!

The following is a concept for a (sequential for now) dance performance, which I hope will tickle your tonsils. I use many of the ideas discussed amongst us. I wish to work on some further ideas which Conal raised much earlier (see his post below) concerning filming techniques in relation to the dance aesthetics of repetition and sequential narrative. But I have come up with this tentative structure for the choreography. I describe the structure, then I pose some questions.

So:

Imagine a black screen.

4 dancers shown in bird's eye view stand together forming a circle - like my initial 'aristotle dance' set-up. They wear all-white capes, again, as described in the aristotle dance. So they look like 4 isoceles triangles whose points meet in the centre of the circle. (This mimics the way that the fortune teller origami looks.) They are standing on a black floor.

Gauze layers are added to each dancer according to the instruction of the fortune teller, which has the Lacanian glyphs and marks on it. So the dancers gradually become encumbered with layers of Lacanian gauze.

The dancers move in a circle to the rhythm of the fortune teller's fingers' movements, and they stop still when the fortune teller opens and the instruction then is carried out by stage hands dressed in all black, so as not to be seen.

(Where is the fortune teller origami displayed? In a split-screen section of the screen? As a semi-transparent overlay on top of the dancers? As a separate cut-away shot on its own? Is it a voice chanting a rhythm and announcing the fate?)

Once all the Lacanian glyphs have been added to the dancers' costumes, their rotation ceases - this could be to the sound of a percussive noise like a clap, or beat. They stand still.

Now the kick-flare gesture is performed by all 4 dancers. So we see the dancers' gauze layers billow, from above. The dancers cease the kick-flare, turn to face outwards and stop. now they will look like a white star from above.

The camera point of view changes now (cut-away) so that we see the first dancer (not sure if each is distinctively or uniformly costumed) straight-on, but we can also see the others standing adjacent.

The 1st dancer performs minute gestures similar to those of Tamasuburo's heron. Stage hands dressed in black carry out hikinuku: 3 costumes are removed. Because we are watching from front-on, we are able to see a costume under the gauze layers which hadn't been visible from the bird's eye view. So the gauze layers are removed, then the white cape, then the costume that is underneath but which we have now had glimpses of. It is then fully revealed. (what is it?)

When it too is finally removed, the dancer is dressed entirely in black and folds down into a crouching position so that it looks as if there is no one there, just a pile of folded materials.

Now the camera glides to the 2nd dancer. They carry out similar gestures as above, but different, and when their gauze then cape is removed their costume is revealed.
(again - what is it?) They too have this removed and then crouch down.

The camera moves to the third dancer - same as above.
The camera moves to the fourth dancer - who follows suit.

Nnow the camera cuts away to a bird's eye view. We see 4 piles of fabric in the centre of the black screen, presumably like four strange anemone flowers.

Immediately, this plays back in reverse.
When we see the start there needs to be some technical edit so we can insert a new film, but it ought to look invisibly spliced in. Imagine the four dancers in the circle as at the start, wearing the white capes. The capes are removed: seen from above, but then the camera view immediately shifts so that we see the dancers straight-on.

...

And there, I got stuck! Well, I took a tea break and then was distracted. I love the idea of the humoured procession with unwrapping of boxes to find the golden phallus, and I also did not include the great costumes made by Conal - I ran out of steam, but will continue later tonight.

The questions:
1) Do we choreograph individual short narratives, and then layer them/splice them/ etc in production? Or will some as I suggest above work with each other so we have maybe two or three longer sequences, which we can edit, rather than four or five sequences. Which could be too confusing for the viewer: unless we are making cognitive overload an outright point!
2) How do we film the origami fortune teller, if at all?
3) How do we bring in the use of visible text, if at all?
4) What sounds should we use? Will it be singing, speaking, instrumental, percussive etc?
5) How about using a giant, golden Greek F symbol i.e. Lacan's phallic symbol or do you deliberately want to bring in ribald sexual puns? Rather than obscure structuralist ones...!
6) Could there be a large golden penis-shaped phallus out of which jumps out a mountain troll? or white rabbit...

Yours: SH.