Video may have killed the radio star, but for the duo behind Bridgman|Packer Dance, it’s become a staple of their interactive live performances that walk the line between appearance and reality.
“We consider video to be part of expanding our artistic palette,” said Art Bridgman during a phone interview earlier this week. Mr. Bridgman choreographs and performs alongside his artistic and life partner Myrna Packer. “We move inside the video, in a sense. We want to actually inhabit it.”
Nearly 40 years after premiering their first-ever collaborative work on the Vineyard, the New York-based pair will return this weekend to perform two works as part of the Yard’s winter series. The performance begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center.
Though they’ve collaborated for decades, it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium and proliferation of cheap video equipment that they began integrating video technology into their choreography. Ms. Packer said she wasn’t excited about the idea at first.
“What I had seen on stage at that point of video with dance was I had to choose what to watch. I often found that the dancers became minimized,” she said.
After some experimentation, the pair saw the thematic potential of mixing live performance with video projections to examine the nature of reality and the fractured self. They premiered their first mixed media piece, Seductive Reasoning, in 2003 and quickly garnered critical acclaim and national awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, the first ever to be given to two individuals for their collaborative work.
“We’ve brought our individual strengths, but really it’s been a long conversation between the two of us of what we value,” said Ms. Packer about the pair’s shared approach. “We’re influenced by many of the techniques and styles of the contemporary dance world. We challenge ourselves for each piece we make to keep exploring our movement vocabulary.”
“We don’t really consider ourselves exponents of any particular style. It’s very eclectic,” added Mr. Bridgman.
In Voyeur, one of the pieces that will be performed Saturday, paintings by Edward Hopper provide the inspiration for a multilayered set with projected video on a makeshift wall and the back wall of the stage. The audience will play the role of voyeur, peeking into the private lives of the dancers as they move within the set, but never out of sight due to a live camera projection.
“Even though they can’t see us, they can see in live time what’s going on,” said Mr. Bridgman. “We love to experiment and play with the idea of live 3D movement, projected movement and pre-recorded movement...and put them all together and let the audience live with it.”
The duo’s other work, Table Bed Mirror, made its debut last month. The piece dives into the human mind for it’s surrealistic and magical visuals. Ms. Packer said the pair was particularly interested in dreams and the divide between the still, sleeping self in the real world and the moving, lucid self within the fantasy.
“It’s a journey through a night of wild dreams with reference to the neuroscience of dreams,” she said. “There’s all of this activity happening while we’re lying still. We’re having these adventures in our mind.”
Saturday’s performance will also include a short film made up entirely of drone footage of the duo dancing on various stages they created on a construction site in the Catskills.
Though they often return to similar themes in their work, Ms. Packer said there is no agenda or expectation of what the audience should take away from the performances. She said the ambiguity and wide range of interpretation is a hallmark of their style.
“What we’re doing on stage is really reflecting on the human experience and hopefully there is something in that, that resonances with individuals in the audience,” she said.
“We like the juxtaposition of appealing to one’s intellect and their visceral sense of movement at the same time,” added Mr. Bridgman.
During their time on-Island, the duo also plans to set up a “video playground” at the high school to allow students to capture their movements and do their own experimentation with video projections. They said they will also teach the students how to use the software so they can create their own video pieces using distortion, delay or any other sort of “happy accidents” the pair say is part of the creative journey.
“I think that’s still a huge part of our process,” said Ms. Packer.
“I think our lives are largely built on happy accidents,” added Mr. Bridgman.
They emphasized that their career owes a lot to Island support, and they plan on making it a regular stop to showcase their work.
“We find every time we come to the Yard...it’s just inspiring,” said Ms. Packer. “Who knows, maybe down the road there may be something that’s Vineyard inspired.”
For tickets and further information, including video clips, visit dancetheyard.org.
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