Choreography

CHOREOGRAPHY

Samara Thompson has been choreographing professionally for over ten years. She specializes in the amalgamation of modern dance with computer technology. In the summer of 2001, she premiered Simulacrum, a two-part composition that utilized various multimedia tools in both its creation and production. This piece of choreography began by creating an environment where live dancers interacted with their computer-generated counterparts. These virtual partners were animated using Dance Forms (formerly Life Forms), a 3D movement program that has become the cornerstone of choreographic software.

Transparent, Thompson's next choreographic work, premiered at the fringe Festival of Independent Dancers (fFIDA) in Toronto in August 2002. Again, Thompson used Dance Forms to animate her digital dancers. This time, however, her computer bodies were textured and enhanced in graphics programs, imported back into Dance Forms, and then exported to video editing software. The choreography was created both in the studio and on the computer. The video-projected digitized bodies flowed and moved into and with text, as well as with the dancers. Through the abstraction of letter forms and the intersecting of live and animated bodies, Transparent inferred the connection between the real and the virtual. An energetic and quirky piece of choreography, Transparent presented a visual fruit salad while subtly commenting on the individual's role in a technologically driven society.

Her latest work, See Through Me, asks how do you see your virtual self? Technically enhanced, digitally downcast or humourously pixelated? Again, live and virtual dancers collide, creating a dance filled with double entendres and double vision. See Through Me premieres in August 2004 at fFIDA.

For more information and dates on upcoming shows, please contact samarat@mac.com