World Premiere of 'Night Cloud'
Collaborative Project by Sangjun, Yoo and Daniel E Roberts
Dancers: Biag Gaongen, Anthony Milian, Hannah Simmons, and Erin Yen
part of 'Temporary Landscapes' at Velocity Dance Center, Seattle WA in May 18-20th 2018
Night Cloud is a performance project featuring the work of new-media artist Sangjun Yoo and choreographer Daniel Roberts. Stemming from a shared interest in the inherent mystery of film noir cinematography, we would like to create a cloud environment inside a black-box theater setting, using four light projectors and haze machines. Our process focuses on the intersection of media and choreography and how both light and movement patterns can develop in the described environment. Our goals are to realize a collaborative performance that holds the integrity of our respective artistic mediums, gain a new perspective on dance-media collaborations, and create a stunning digital performance piece. In our collaboration, we are influenced by natural phenomena, specifically in weather and cloud studies, and how inherent properties of space, shape, scale, and color influence our compositional choices. In his work, Yoo explores visible and invisible matters of subconscious interactions between people and their surroundings; he investigates contingency and the subsequent feelings created by compositional elements and movement improvisation. Roberts’ choreographic practice investigates time/musicality present in nature, such as weather and cloud patterns. He works extensively with movement invention, technical complexity, polyrhythmic co-ordinations, and spatial design. Roberts and I hail from very different artistic backgrounds with diverse cultural experiences of art practices in Asia, Europe, South America, and the US. This specific collaborative process of light and movement interaction is new territory for our respective artistic work and we would greatly appreciate the opportunity to share this experience with a public audience in Seattle.