Since forming the dance theater company in 1993, Artistic Directors Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello have been creating dynamic live performances that combine dance, music, theater and interactive digital media.
For more information on Troika Ranch visit: www.troikaranch.org
Excerpt from Evolving Traditions: Artists Working in New Media (2002).
Transcript
NARRATOR
Using computer technology Troika Ranch transcends traditional music composition in dance performance.
MARK CONIGLIO
Troika Ranch is a dance theater company that combines dance, theater, interactive computer control media, and sometimes things like robotics set pieces in the works that we make.
DAWN STOPPIELLO
Well we met in a composition class for composing choreographers and I was very interested in the music that he was writing. At the time he told me about this idea for a system called Midi Dancer, which is essentially that device that he saw with Morton Subotnick’s piece but worn on the body of the dancer. And I was completely intrigued by that and wanted to collaborate with him on that idea.
MARK CONIGLIO
This is the Midi Dancer System that I first created in 1989. Dawn has four sensors on four points on here body, her knees and her elbows, and inside there are sensors that when she bends those limbs it’s transmitted on a wireless to the silver boxes then it comes into the computer. And once it comes in I can use it to control any number of media. In this example I’ve set it up so that each time she moves one of those limbs, she’s gonna produce a musical not. And you’ll see that when she does it, if she moves slowly the note is soft and if she moves quickly the note is much louder. I think the important thing to know about this instrument too, is that she as performer understands now what we’ve made for her in this section and she could practice it and become better at it as she approaches performance.
KRISTIN MARTING
Troika Ranch has created the opportunity for people to re imagine different ways that people could be working with the technologies. I think there’s a lot of frequency of notions that the technology is gonna dry things out or that it’s gonna make things more intellectual and abstract. I think that they completely counter that. I think there’s a sense that the technology is gonna run the performer instead of the performer being able to run the technology. They’ve countered that. I think that they have really helped people imagine things differently in the way that they’re working and not thinking of dance as simply dance, but that it can incorporate all of these different elements. I think that for live performance to continue to have a significant role we have to keep reinventing the forms and reinventing the ways that we work with them. And Troika has been doing that in a very phenomenal way.
<Dancers performing on stage>
DAWN STOPPIELLO
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was based originally on a book called the “Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz” that was written by Alcamis in 1610, although the story is dated in 1459. And Mark and I were intrigued by the story because these Alchemist were using Alchemy, which is a kind of magic of their time and we see the technology that we use as a kind of magic of our time and we wanted to explore the idea of magic and transformation through the eyes of the alchemist but using the sensory technology and digital media that we are comfortable with. It’s a part of our (inaudible).
<Dance performance>
MARK CONIGLIO
I think the key to it was that it’s a reflection on transformation through technology in their time, Alchemy which is something we now call chemistry. They were trying to find ways to transform one element into another or actually transform people from one person into another. And I feel like in our time that’s what technology promises us. And the fact is, I don’t know if that promise really holds water and I wanted to think about that and explore that new piece. And that’s really what we were thinking about when we made the Chemical Wedding.
DAWN STOPPIELLO
There is one other element to the piece, which is a book by Ray Kurtzwell called The Age of Spiritual Machines, and in that book he talks about the kind of evolution of the human to a robot, to be a robot basically, but to create sentient beings that are machines essentially. And so we took that idea, and Mark’s character in the piece is about to get a new brain basically and become one of these sort of sentient machine, and we thought that was an interesting kind of transformation that may turn out positively or it may not. And we don’t answer that question in the piece.
<Clip from the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz>
KRISTIN MARTING
Chemical Wedding is very moving and emotional piece of work while incorporating all these incredible technologies that kind of blow your mind at the same time. So it’s a really wonderful experience to go as a viewer because you’re seeing things that you didn’t expect to see and that perhaps you haven’t seen before in a performing context.
MICHOU SZABO
Working with the sensor device is as a whole other layer to the performance experience. You’re asked to suddenly be more than a dancer. You’re a musician. You control light, video. In the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, I wore a sensor on my wrist that controlled wind and video and it was like a magical experience for me to be in control of that scene. And often we will go through a light beam and trigger a whole other series of events that would happen. It’s just very powerful to be a part of that, very alive and very vibrant.
<Chemical Wedding performance>
MICHOU SZABO
It took me a while to feel comfortable working with the sensors because you are not only thinking about the movements that you’re doing but you’re also listening to the sounds that you’re creating or you’re watching a video screen to see what’s happening on the video. And you have to know how much movement or how much of a fraction of your elbow, your wrist you need to do to create the effect that you’re trying to create. It’s like playing an instrument and that takes practice and it takes time. And so we do a lot of that in rehearsal.
MARK CONIGLIO
I chose to act with interactivity because I saw someone else do it in a very effective way. My teacher, Morton Subotnick, had created a piece called Hungers in which a singer was moving with interactively controlled sensors where she was controlling samples of her voice. And as soon as I saw that, because I’d been working so much with dance, I knew that I had to find a way to put that on the body of the dancer. And in response to that I created the Midi Dancer System, which allowed me to take the movements of dancers and use them to make music.
<Individual Dance performance>
MARK CONIGLIO
I don’t think of the sensors that we use as some kind of cold technological device. I think of them as warm, lovely, luscious instruments. And the reason for that is that I’m trained a composer and in fact I really following in the tradition of a lot of American composers, you know, experimental composers and that I build my own instrument. And these instruments just happen to be electronic sensors, but in fact when I put them on the bodies of the dancers, the way in which we approach working with them is that of a musician who has to learn how to play an instrument. Now of course the difficulty is is that I’m giving them a new instrument that no one’s ever seen before. It’s not like handing someone a violin that has a four hundred year history, but that’s what our dancers give us is the time to investigate what these sensors are and to find out how to play these instruments. And then the course of doing that, they learn how to play them.
DAWN STOPPIELLO
Reine Rien is the piece that Troika Ranch is currently working on. Riene Rien is French for “queen nothing.” And I was interested in the way those two words look written next to each other. They’re very similarly spelled. I also was interested in the idea of someone being the queen of nothing because the piece really started from nowhere for me. I didn’t have an idea choreographically or – about the content. I wanted to start with nothing and let the piece tell me what it was. So I started working on abstract physical relationships between the four dancers and just raw choreographic material. And we worked with that for weeks and weeks and weeks until we started to have this piece and it started to come together. And now I think what it’s become to be about is really about a singular person who’s real and three people who are in her imagination and she is sort of in this dream-like state throughout the entire piece. It’s very expansive and open and meditative in a way.
MARK CONIGLIO
All the sound is being generated using the Midi Dancer System, and I think for me as a composer that’s part of what’s significant about the piece is that we’re actually using four Midi Dancer Systems instead of just one. Prior to this we’ve done a number of solos for Dawn. In the Chemical Wedding there was a solo that used the Midi Dancer System, but we’ve never used four at the same time, and it introduces a number of challenges for us both as a composer because just dealing with those four people producing that music of course. But also how do you let the audience understand what’s going on? Because it’s an instrument they don’t necessarily understand, it’s difficult already with one person using it for the audience to understand that the dancer is in fact acting as the musician or the controller of the video. And how to do that with four people and make that clear is more challenging. And that’s been one of the fun things to find out how to do as we make this piece.
DAWN STOPPIELLO
In 1989 when Mark and I first started working with the Midi Dancer, we both agreed, we’re gonna work with this device for at least 10 years. We’re not gonna give up on it before 10 years because we couldn’t possibly know anything about it any sooner than that. And in fact we’ve exceeded that limit so far and we’re still not done experimenting with it.