A cinematic dance production on stage

HAVE memory stick, will travel. A collaboration between a dance choreographer and a film producer resulted in an almost cinematic spectacle of movement on stage with just a few dancers and video art on a flash drive.

Film producer Eva Baro and dance choreographer Matias Martinez's production, Praying Mantis, is a story told with video art, visual effects and light.

"We defend clean technologies and we liked the concept of storing scenery in a memory stick, so that the only physical presence on stage is the dancers and movement, their soul," says Baro.

And their dance production promises to be cinematic, with the cinema music of Armand Amar, cinema photography direction of Reinier Van Brummelen and cinema special effects of David Marti and Montse Ribe.

Praying Mantis is a dance production about a girl in the middle of the Bolivian Salt desert who's saved by a group of praying mantis. Martinez mashes several dance and movement techniques in a style which he personally developed, which emphasises the centre of the body and adapts to the plot of the story that is going on.

"But rather than showing a dance technique or style, we try to bring original stories representing them with dance, video art, music and light all together," says Martinez.

Working on feelings

The two collaborators' starting point was how they wanted the audience to feel, they share.

"Rather than action that was clear from the plot, we worked on the feelings we wanted to show with images, movements, dance, music and special effects. It's been a creative collaboration from the dance point of view and the video point of view," says Baro.

How movement is linked to emotions is a question that has intrigued the film producer. Since technology has made such major changes in society and the way people communicate with one another, she began to see the need for movement even more than ever.

"The real physical experience is becoming a question of survival for humans. We need to move in real life more than ever . . . we need dance," she muses, recalling the creative period she went through thinking about the importance of movement.

Invited by Martinez to help him in a production, she was impressed enough to look for ways to help him express his art form. Dance, for him, he shares, is a corporeal expression of something.

"It's not about movement or style, but choreography is about pulling together everything to take people to another dimension," he shares.

When their project got underway, Baro was inspired by a Zana Brinski picture of a bug which dances in front of its prey before attacking it. "It's like bug's dance of the death. So I started to compare the instinctive dance of insects versus the instinctive/artistic dance of the humans and keep asking why dance and movement makes us so happy," she elaborates.

Sharing beauty with art

"At the end what was clear was that we wanted people to stop for a little moment in their lives and feel, to be aware about the beauty that is still there outside. We all wanted the same thing that is making people happy for a moment in their life provoking ticklish, magical, and positive feelings through art," she says.

Adds Martinez: "We wanted to share beauty with art. There was a script and then from there every creative side contributed with an expression. The production is like a painting with video images and the feelings are in the dance which drives the action."

'Praying Mantis' by Vision of the Dance will be performed tonight and tomorrow night at the Esplanade Theatre. For tickets, go to www.sistic.com.sg