Welcome to the National Gallery in VR180. You can watch this using a VR
headset or a cardboard, but if you don't have either, don't worry. If you're on
mobile, you can move your phone around, or from desktop, click around to see more of
this incredible space. Enjoy!
Hi guys, my name is Tony Adigun, I'm a
choreographer from East London, Stratford, where we are situated today, and I'm here to
talk about a new project that I'm engaging in with the National Gallery.
It's a collaboration using VR180 to show dance and to I suppose, how can we
put it, animate the space. I'm here at Studio Wayne McGregor. I was here a year ago
engaging in Quest Lab which was the chance for me to look at technology, and
also my day to day, which is dance, and bring those two aspects together, and
hopefully fuse them in the work that I'm making in the future. So again, we're here
today to work on that, those two pieces and maybe if you follow me we can have a
look at what a dancers are getting on with in the studio.
Hi, and welcome to the studio,
we're here at Wayne McGregor studios in East London. I'm here with four of the
dancers that are engaging with me on this project. We're gonna start off with
Ajani and Godsun, please could you come down.
Welcome! Could you do some
introduction on yourself in your background and your path into dance.
Sure, so yeah, I started dancing when I was four years old, I then started
again when I was seven years old and I've been doing hip-hop since those
times. I then went on to do more dance training at the Brit School and after
Brit School I went straight into further education at London Contemporary Dance
School, and got a degree in contemporary dance. And since then, I've been exploring and
continue to explore different styles in terms of what I do as a choreographer, and a
dancer, as a freelance dancers and dance choreographer.
Hi, I'm Theopholus Godsun Oloyade
I am a dancer and performer for the best part of 19 years. I'm a senior member
of Boy Blue. My pioneer dance style krump which I'm now taking into the
contemporary world to choreograph and widen my reach within the movement.
Thank you guys! So yeah I'm quite excited to be working
with these two dancers who I know separately and to work on this duet
for the space. So what we're going to do is maybe give you a bit of an insight
into the different textures and movement qualities that these guys hold.
Thank you guys, thank you, so yeah, bit of an insight into why I'm excited about
working and creating this duet. The space that we are using is the
Portico space. When you walk into the space, it's quite a grand
space, quite ethereal I would say, in that aspect, and it has a lot of different
textures, that of the hard and that of the soft. So for me, as a choreographer,
I'm really interested about how we can interplay with that in terms of Theo
with his Krump style and then Ajani with his hip-hop style, but a softer version. So
that's quite interesting for me. We also drew inspiration from the mentality, I
guess, of Anrep, being able to bring something more contemporary into a space
at the time, and for me what excites me is whether these contemporary dancers in
terms of their styles, and bringing that to a space that maybe has never seen it
before. So those are the two aspects that we've kind of drawn upon, and we're
excited to take it and move forward. Yeah, thank you guys, look at the smiles!
Thank you guys, thank you, next up we'll bring Sam and Sara down. Sam and Sara?
Would you like to join us?
Thank you. Could you maybe give a little bit of an insight into your background
and pathways of dance, and so on?
Sure, so I'm Sam, I originate from Croydon, I then
moved to Leeds. I started dance when I was young, just
because of my sister. Me and her are super-competitive, she started dancing I
was like, okay, gonna have to start dancing now, beat her at her own game. I started dancing, found out
I really liked it, it was a real passion of mine, and it could be a career. So then
I went and trained at Northern School of Contemporary Dance, then went
on to Edge, where I met Tony, and we've been working together for a few years
now, and I've just started to kind of like create my own stuff as well.
Hi, I'm Sara, I come from Bordeaux in France. I started dancing at the age of six
because I wanted to become a synchronised swimmer, but I only carried
on dancing, and at the age of 18 I moved to London, studied at the London
Contemporary Dance School. The year later, I joined Edge, met Tony, Sam, we worked
together, and since then we met on different occasions, and here we are!
And here we are indeed. So again it's exciting for me to be working with
dancers that I've work with previously before, they have a good rapport with each other,
and also a good rapport with myself to help in the studio. The painting for us
dealt with a lot of different aspects. One of them which we won't touch upon a
right now, but we will display in this short sitting here we go guys.
Nice, nice, thank you guys, so that was a small, small insight shall we say into
the longer duet. One of the main aspects, well I'll I let you elaborate maybe,
in terms of the characters, and the amount of people that we saw in the main thing.
Yeah so there's a lot of different people in the painting,
with loads different kind of like, you can see the loads of different
expressions on their faces, those different thought processes going
through it, kind of like should I be watching this, shouldn't I? Kind of like,
judging themselves, whilst doing it. There was like a little girl in it who can't
watch at all, there's a girl who's kind of like, wanting to watch that, you can
see that she kind of feels bad about it. There's a guy who's like breaking the fourth
wall, he's looking directly out of the painting at you, almost judging you for
looking at the painting. We were kind of like playing with these kind of
different gazes, different looks, and like how we can interpret that and pop that
into the movement, and it's the piece itself.
Definitely, and that was really
exciting for us as well just to kind of take inspiration from the painting
trying to put the phrases into our literal movement but also trying to get
abstract inspiration from the paint as well. One of the main
aspects which we touched upon which was the different types of gazes that are in
that painting, but also there was a combination of the project itself being
a VR180, and how important we know gaze is, and how you find that as well.
Yeah it's really interesting how the painting itself, the way they were related, it goes
with our relationship to you watching, because he breaks this fourth wall that you
can have with a dance piece on stage. You are in the same room as us, and we have
to establish a relationship with you that it's really straightforward, we
engage with you, so he was like working with you and not just with each other in
in the duet. So it's very different to a dance film, as well, that the camera can
follow you and catch your gaze as you're moving but this time it's up to us to
have to catch your your gaze.
Yeah, definitely, again that's one of the main focal points for us, this is how we
changed our mindset from working on a normal stage to now working specifically
for this medium. We hope you've enjoyed that little insight guys to our story.
This has been us, you guys have been you and we'll catch you in the next video.
Thank you.