Can you dance about Intellectual Enlightenment and Cultural Rebirth?

From Michelangelo’s famous “David” sculpture to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, the Renaissance period was all about artistic, scientific and literary breakthroughs that marked the 14th to 17th century.

This year, YAF’s very own staff Anca Chung, Lindsey McAlister and Desiree Ho, plus fantastic YAF intern and performer Bethany Chan created a Renaissance-themed dance piece for Standard Chartered Arts in the Park 2013, themed “Gallery in Motion”. Anca, Lindsey and Desiree join us to talk about this dance.

On how they incorporated “Renaissance” into the choreography…

Lindsey: Having a visual stimulus is right up my street! I often give visuals to groups when creating dance work.

Anca and I discussed which genre of Renaissance artists we thought would be exciting to work with and were inspired by Da Vinci’s sketches of hands and Michelangelo’s sculptures.

We gave the dancers visuals to encourage them to create short sequences relating to different aspects of the artwork.

Once each dancer had explored the images using their own movement vocabulary we pieced them together, rather like putting a jigsaw together to create a complete picture.

Anca: I have always been fascinated by how the arts crosses into other disciplines (and vice versa), and so was super excited when I found out we were working with the Renaissance art movement – Renaissance artists were some of the best applied mathematicians of their times!

If you google Da Vinci, you will see that he comes up as a mathematician as much as an artist. If he were still living today, he would be doing the work of a mathematician, painter, architect and engineer – painting beautiful artworks and at the same time designing machines and buildings. He was convinced that the entire universe, including the arts, could be explained in geometrical terms. And that mathematics was an essential tool for painting.

As such, Lindsey and I decided that the second section of our dance should be themed ‘infinity ∞’, a concept that Renaissance artists and mathematicians were fascinated with.

Desiree: Since the Renaissance was also about the advances in math and science, Bethany and I incorporated the Fibonacci sequence into our dance. You can see that in the way the dancers join and leave the group 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21….

Also, the Fibonacci sequence appears in nature and biological settings, such as in the branching of trees, the arrangement of pine cones, and the arrangement of rose petals, so the use of spirals and imagery from nature was also integral to our choreography.

For example, when the dancers start the third piece, they spiral into a specific position– that is inspired by the Fibonacci sequence.

Furthermore, a lot of the movement in our piece takes from nature, such as flowers, waves and shells– you’ll see the associations in the dance.

On choosing the music…

Anca: When I think of Renaissance, I think of timeless statues that stand in grand museums and momentous times when people wearing long dark robes worked by candlelight to invent and create some of the world’s best artworks and buildings – quite dramatic (and probably a bit inaccurate)! Therefore I wanted to select a song that conveyed drama and had a raw feeling. To complement the theme of infinity, I was looking for a song that sounded like it would go on and on.

It actually took a very, very long time to find, but the minute I heard it, I knew that this was it!

160BPM by the ever-talented Hans Zimmer is from theAngels and Demons soundtrack. It has a continual drum beat with many layers of singing voices and alternates between chaos and peace – perfect for Renaissance and infinity.

Lindsey: I wanted something that was easy to count, light, airy…when I heard “Fireflies” played by the Vitamin String Quartet I loved it…I also liked that people would be familiar with the music…originally a song by Owl City.

On the major challenges of creating this work…

Anca:  I would say the counts! This song has syncopated sections and bits without a clear beat. In rehearsals, we would be counting 1234…5 6… 7… 1..… wait, where did the 8 go?!

It’s been such a fun and fantastic process. Our talented dancers have learned choreographed sections exceedingly quickly and have created their own fantastic infinity-inspired dance sequences that really use the music. They are able to remember the million formations and now have the super power of travelling across the stage in half a count!

Lindsey: Our group were younger dancers and were good technically but many of them had not devised work before so initially I think they were quite shy of being ‘choreographers’. After several sessions their confidence grew and they flourished!

Desiree: The Renaissance dancers are very varied in style, so it was initially challenging to get them to dance all as ‘one’. Some had training in ballet while others were clearly Chinese dancers. I, on the other hand, have a background in jazz and hip hop. Furthermore the three pieces that make up this dance are totally different in style! Since my style for this piece was quite dramatic and powerful,  it took some  time for the dancers to break off from what they were used to. That said, they have SO much potential and worked really hard! I cannot wait to see their performance!

On what audiences can expect the performance this year…

Lindsey: Renaissance has been created by 4 choreographers and the dancers…so it is very rich with ideas and styles!

Anca: A performance that makes you revel at the creativity and the power of youth. Our group is the youngest, but look at them go!!

Desiree: Amazing costumes to go with the dance! The fabric used to create these elegant dresses were specifically laser printed with images of Renaissance art just for this piece!

(Renaissance Dancers at the TVB Studio)