Surround:Visual

“Surround:Visual” A multimedia/dance performance with live music at Ashbury Hall at Babeville & the Birchfield Penny Art Center

A collaboration between the Reactionary Ensemble and nimbus dance with twenty-five performers:

dancers: Erin Bahn, Beth Elkins, Nancy Hughes, Angela Lopez, Leanne Rinelli and Bonnie Jean Taylor

video artists: Cory Gath, Courtney Grim, Carl Lee, Tammy McGovern, Brian Milbrand, Jeff Maciejewski and Vince Mistretta

musicians: Jim Abramson, Kathleen Ashwill, Steve Baczkowski, Michael Basinski, Gabe Beam, Kevin Obrien Cain, Jenece Gerber, Mike Kimaid, Keir Neuringer, KG Price and T. Andrew Trump

set designed and fabrication: Brad Wales, Brian Podleski, and Bryan Handley.

Both performances are supported in part with funds from the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds which are supported by The New York State Council on the Arts and the Strategic Opportunity Stipends Program through New York Foundation for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. Commissioned as part of Beyond/In WNY 2010. The project also received a generous donation of steel from ALP Steel Corp.

The show featured a 40-ft diameter screen surrounding the audience designed by architect Brad Wales and Brian Podleski. The screens have 8 different live mixed videos projected onto it, mixed by 8 different video artists utilizing the same audio data from the instruments.

The evening will feature 2 50-minute sets of improvisational compositions including “The Wave”, in which the dancers will control waves of light and sound with their movements, “Astaire/Rogers,” a visual remixing and dance interpretation of classic Astaire/Rogers dances and “We’ve Got You Surrounded v.2”, a second variation on a piece in Surround: Audio. Clips used in the show are sampled from Shall We Dance, The Gay Divorcee, Altered States, The Blob, The Last Temptation of Christ and Videodrome.