This choreographic research is the final product of an independent study completed and presented in April 2015 at the University of Rochester Undergraduate Research Exposition.  The poster won a "Professor's Choice" award for best poster in the humanities and the film won 2nd place in the "Visual Arts in Undergraduate Research" contest. 

 

All dancers in this film have completed a full semester course on movement improvisational techniques through the Program of Dance and Movement at the University of Rochester.  In that course, students learned and extensively worked with Anne Bogart’s “Viewpoints”—  a technique of movement composition based on improvised gestures and movements.  Key elements of this technique are space, shape, time, and effort/energy; improvised movement may pull from one or more of these elements.  Within the element of space falls the viewpoint known as “Architecture.”  This viewpoint allows each dancer to look for shapes and forms in the surrounding environment and create movement based on what he or she sees and experiences.  These experiences may also pull from the context and meaning of the architectural locations themselves.  Meaning emerges as the spaces provide danger, enclosure, boundary, freedom and more.