INFLUENCE OF NEW MEDIA LANGUAGES IN STAGE PERCEPTION

[Andres Leon-Geyer]

 Can we talk about a influence of the languages of New Media on the perceiving of stage? 

Mark Coniglio, in a conference in Mexico City this year, made again his point about that, although decades of use of new media in dance, there is no real influence of new media in the way choreographers create. As far I understood. Trough him I also got interested in the influence of cinematographic language on the new media visual language, specially on stage. I am sure there is influence of cinema both on new media and on stage arts media, I mean theater and dance, and of course similar languages, and understanding stage as the space defined for performance. I can't say anything about a real influence of new media aesthetics and methods on the way of creating in theater and choreography for now (except Troikas piece Loop Diver), but what about the viewer?

So, my starting question is: if we conceive that film has influenced the way we see theater and generally speaking stage, can we detect influences of newer media and which? 

PD: sorry for my english, and for posting as newbie but I was kind of puzzled there are no discussions

[Andres Leon-Geyer]

I think the point if there is a "real" influence or not, depends a lot of the expectations to how this influence should look like.

shall the movements change? shall the creation of the concept change? is it enough to use new media? Which is the difference between combination and influence? and where shall the influence be: in themes, in the product, in the way of thinking the languages, in the way of creating the movements, in the form or quality of them, or just in their reference and interlocutors?

In my perception, there are a lot of good combinations. The link you put is one of what I would call combination, but no influence in the creation of movements. Presence of new media certainly, but I still see the "normal" dance and choreography language: turns, liftings, jumps as usual - with no relation to the media except, as I say, the presence. But parallel presence means not necessarily a change of ways of creation. I work also with new media on stage, but my area is visuals and not choreographing, and I often see that it looks like two parallel languages, that combined from the concept on can very well say one common message, but seldom changes in the way choreography itself is done.

Nevertheless, I agree with you, I wonder if there are really no influences, I am just saying that the opinion exists. For sure, Cunningham could be an example of how changing the way of creation with video, and in my opinion the way of working of Howard Katz is strongly influenced by the conscience of the possibilities of new media and of his colleague Yoann Trellu : (http://www.keyframed.org/video-pages/The_Trial.htm, http://www.keyframed.org/video-pages/ophelia_25min.htm). And even loop diver itself.

And the world is big, there are a lot of works. Maybe the point of Coniglio is that there aren't as much examples of influence in the creation of choreography as there could be expected, seeing how much time has passed by so long, and how much new media is used on stages nowadays.