Wednesday, July 24, 2002 at 2pm in P8493
Title
Performing in Virtual Environments with Technologically Mediated Bodies
Abstract
The body has achieved new status in the age of virtual technologies. Parallel with this new status is a marked concern by many for its disappearance from some of our discourses. References to "embodied experience", "virtual body", "simulated experience" and "virtual embodiment" indicate a resurgence of interest in the "lived" experience of phenomenology as new technologies exert more and more influence in the domain of human activities. Serious attempts are being made to imbue computing machines with the accumulated knowledge and experience human beings have acquired over millions of years of evolutionary development. These technologies have opened dance practice up to a new and fundamentally different kind of mediation, with some startling results. Performing in virtual environments with technologically mediated bodies suggests that some basic concepts surrounding dance and its relation to other disciplines needs re-evaluation. This talk is an opportunity to share perspectives, methods and approaches and to begin to address some of the challenges we face in an institution dedicated to interdisciplinary research.
Biography
Henry Daniel is Artisitic Director of Full Performing Bodies and an Assistant Professor in the School of the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Born in Trinidad, West Indies, he worked as an actor with the Trinidad Theatre Workshop under the direction of poet/playwright Derek Walcott. he also trained as a dancer at the Juilliard School, The Joffrey Ballet School and the Alvin Ailey America Dance Centre in New York. He has toured extensively with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre Workshop in the New York area, and as a member of the José Limón Dance Company in the USA and abroad. From 1984-1994 he lived and worked in Germany as dancer and choreographer with Tanzprojekt München, Tanztheater Frieburg and Tanztheater Münster. He directed and choreographed as a freelance artist as well as for his own company, Henry Daniel and Dancers. In the UK he taught dance at the Laban Centre, London (1994-95), was a Theatre and Performance Lecturer at the University of Plymouth (1997), a Dance Lecturer at University College Scarborough (1997-98), and a Dance, Theatre and Performance Lecturer at King Alfred's College in Winchester until 2000. He is completing a Ph.D. in Contemporary Performance and New Technologies at Bristol University's Department of Drama: Theatre, Film and TV. His areas of research are contemporary dance technique and body practices, choreography, dance history and criticism, dance and technology, intercultural performance and interdisciplinary performance studies. His most recent choreographed works have been "Relatively well Centered" (2001), and "Out of Body" (2002) for CBC TV's ZED. Henry recently appeared with Karen Jamieson Dance Company on "The Spirit Concert", a benefit for the Bill Reid Foundation, directed by Bruce Ruddell at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. This concert will be aired on CBC TV's Opening Night program in the Fall of 2002.
