Access Grid Learns to Dance

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Dance is fundamentally concerned with the body moving in space and time. New technologies that challenge the traditional definitions of these categories provide fruitful territory, both creatively and critically, for the dance artist-scholar. One such technology is Access Grid, which has traditionally been used for meetings between distant work colleagues and is now being used by the e-Dance project for telepresent performances. Interdisciplinary projects, such as e-Dance, exemplify the appeal and benefits of e-Research across all research disciplines.

e-Dance repurposes the Access Grid and integrated Grid technologies, as a context for telepresent performance and hypermedia documentation. In making use of recent developments in the visualisation of spatio-temporal structures and discourse, the project addresses two intersecting questions. Firstly, what unique opportunities does the distributed Access Grid environment provide for developing new approaches to the choreographic process and the capture and modelling of practice-led research? Secondly, how can choreographic knowledge and sensibility enable e-Research practice to make its applications more usable within performance/arts, practice-led research?

The first six months of the project have focused on developing a common set of methodologies and working practices across the disciplines involved. The project has been designed around a series of ‘research intensives’ that bring researchers and practitioners into the studio setting. This experimental, practice-led laboratory provides the context in which to explore Access Grid as a creative environment, to develop strategies for capturing and documenting the creative process and to evaluate software developments in a meaningful, user-led environment.

James Hewison, a professional dancer and a senior lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire describes his most satisfying and memorable experiences of dance as resulting from “a deep-felt sense of physical connectedness to space”. The concept of virtual dancers forces a shift in thinking from this point of view. However, James found that “it is no less real and urgent to move with a virtual dancer than it is with an actual co-present body on stage. The lack of flesh and blood doesn't lessen the performance imperatives and a desire for coherence and communication”. If virtual dancing can inspire this level of passion in those taking part, it seems that the e-Dance concept has a bright future.

e-Dance is a two-year interdisciplinary, practice-led project that brings together practitioners, academics and research councils from the fields of Dance and e-Research. The project involves researchers from the University of Bedfordshire, University of Manchester, University of Leeds and the Open University as well as dancers from the professional, independent dance sector.

Helen Bailey, e-Dance

www.ahessc.ac.uk/e-dance