modacolab

“PRINTDANCE” was a collaboration between Stone Metal Press and the Modern Dancers Co-Laboratory (MoDaCoLab) exploring the art of printmaking combined with the art of dance. The guideline of the work was to choreograph a performance where the weight of the dancing bodies acted as the press for making fine art prints. Each show produced two monotone 8’ x 4’ prints on canvas. Every two shows produced the full image (measuring 16′ by 8′) in a different color of ink (turquoise, royal blue, purple, and black). Kristina Mistry, Jayne King, and Leslie Siegel (representing MoDaCoLab) choreographed and performed the 30-minute structured improvisational printmaking dance. It was presented eight times at the Cody Library in San Antonio, Texas. In approximately one month, we learned printmaking techniques and skills, evolved a unified choreographic vision, resolved all technical issues related to the performance, and created and rehearsed the work. As choreographers, we were challenged to integrate both form and function. We explored ways to move that replicated the natural movement of our printmaking materials: rolling like the paint rollers, wafting like the fabric, sliding like ink, lifting each other like rollers lifting ink, and pressing against each other like fabric and ink becoming one. We explored what imagery we could produce to expand the viewer’s perception of the materials beyond the utilitarian. We issued the paint rollers like soldiers being issued weapons and marching off to their jobs. We used the giant sheets of Lexan as windows to frame each other dancing. We carried in a dancer, dressed in white, on our shoulders, the same way we had carried in the long white tubes of fabric. Musically, we chose different pieces of music to reflect the different energy of each stage of the printmaking process: the whimsical anticipation of beginning a new project, the mechanical, percussive “tick tock” of having only ten minutes to ink before the ink dried, and the languid, sensual bluesy feeling of merging ink and fabric into a print. Overall, we attempted to push the boundaries of the choreography while still achieving a solid printmaking result, and many audience members were engaged enough in the dancing to be surprised and reminded that our physical work of art had also produced a tangible visual work of art. The final surprise for the audience came after the prints were revealed: We culminated the piece by using each other as canvases, pressing our inky feet as footprints onto the pristine white of our costumes. Subsequently, we dived onto the plates and rolled the print’s imagery onto our bodies, in essence, becoming the prints inasmuch as the prints had become the dance. Print Design by Regina Saunders. Videography & Editing by James Saunders. Additional dancing by Christy Walsh for two of the eight performances.