Out Innerspace's High-Tech Dance Makes the Stage a Surveillance State
Out Innerspace's new work incorporates footage from an on-stage security camera to represent the constant surveillance that the Innocents live under in their oppressive, 1984-esque society. (Out Innerspace)
As the dancers rehearse in a studio beside the Margaret Greenham Theatre, Craig Alfredson is working with one of the show’s key performers, on a stage littered with lights and power cables.
In a few short days, Vancouver’s Out Innerspace Dance Theatre will preview their latest work at Banff Centre, which the institution is helping develop. Alfredson is working with one of the show’s key performers.
In the past six weeks, Alfredson has gotten to know this performer pretty well, inside and out: developing a common language, giving direction and, when necessary, reaching inside the performer’s guts and doing a bit of rewiring.
Alfredson and the rest of the show’s tech crew are getting the character— a heavily-modified infrared security camera — ready for its big debut.
“I'm interested in pushing the boundaries of what we can do in the arts with technology,” says Alfredson, technical director of the show.
For Alfredson, that means exploring how technology can help audiences connect with dance. In Major Motion Picture — a work about people suffering under a manipulative, Orwellian society — that means making the security camera a vital part of the show.
“It almost acts like a character in itself,” he says. “It's always looking around, seeing things.”
It’s more than just a prop. The camera will be recording what it sees, with the video projected onto stage. It’s like another set of eyes for a voyeuristic audience, allowing them to see hidden parts of the stage and peek at what the dancers are doing when the stage lights go down. This camera character will also occasionally turn its unblinking eye on the audience, capturing them as well.
“For the audience to be able to see themselves and react to themselves reacting to the piece is sort of an interesting philosophical thing that we're playing with.” he says.
Other video projections and lighting experiments are used in the show, including digital graffiti which allows dancers to “paint” on walls using light.
Alfredson believes dance’s abstract nature makes it a natural place to experiment with technology.
As well, creators are less beholden to a set script, allowing companies to build their work around the technology, rather than just pulling it in a couple weeks before the show hits the stage. For this latest performance, Alfredson and Out Innerspace co-founder David Raymond built the show around the idea of surveillance technology, giving the crew six weeks to develop the tech and work in parallel with the dancers rehearsing their pieces.
When it comes to getting everything to work on stage, that extra development time is vital. For instance, the camera they choose for Major Motion Picture was controlled by a clunky little joystick. That might work fine for keeping an eye on a warehouse at night, but it isn’t quite up for smoothly following dancers across a stage. Alfredson has to pull the thing apart, dive into its guts and figure out how to control it from his computer.
Alfredson says it’s a process that takes time, creativity and more than just a bit of luck.
“There's not a lot of money in what we do, so most of the time what we're going to do is buy them and [take them] apart and [see] how we can hack into them and use them for different purposes,” he says.
“We're using it in a way that no one has ever used it before, as far as I know.”
In the end, all the blood, sweat and gears is in service of the dance — Alfredson says there needs to be a balance between the presence of the technology and that of the people on stage. But when it works, it can help pull an audience into the dancers’ world.
“You get people who get excited about the technology maybe, and come see the dance. And realize that dance isn’t just the Nutcracker ballet.
"There’s more to dance than that.”
