Inventing live dance cinema for a post COVID age
The streaming of work from those primarily engaged in making and presenting work for the stage was an inevitable consequence of the impact of COVID-19 in 2020. Most significant over the course of much of the year was how artists, producers and venues considered the form this work should take. Of course capturing on camera and live streaming work from the stage is not new to a performing arts and live music sector ever in pursuit of new audiences, and improved access.
April 2020 began with companies raiding their archives for content to keep their audiences engaged, initially providing this content free of charge. They later learned that much needed revenue could be raised and the quality of engagement increased through modestly charging for access to content. However, as we moved into the tail end of the year, some began to question the function of presenting simple registrations of work performed on stage within a 16×9 frame. One remark often heard from audiences was that this form of presentation simply made them “miss theatres even more”.
Seize the time
One organisation had the foresight and, as it turned out, bravery to seek to address this concern from the beginning. It was April 2020 when the UK’s oldest dance company, Rambert, approached me, initially to consult on and scope a live stream that would replace the show they had planned to tour internationally. The show didn’t yet exist and therefore this was an opportunity to make something bespoke for the medium.
That show, ultimately the first of five made and broadcast across 2020/21, became Draw From Within by Wim Vandekeybus and once it was green lit, my role obtained the title “Broadcast Producer” (working alongside Rambert’s then Senior Producer, now Director of Producing, Francesca Moseley). Essentially the role combined those of a film and live TV producer with that of a creative technologist in a performing arts context, the latter researching and designing technical systems and bespoke methodologies for a specific and unprecedented performance project.
Key to the role was designing and implementing a process that would adapt and hybridise the methodologies of dance creation for stage, traditional filmmaking and multi-camera live performance capture/streaming to deliver on the choreographer’s and, consequentially director’s, ambition to create an “immersive” and “cinematic” work. Wim Vandekeybus had some experience of directing film, having directed a feature in the past, but none of the live, multi-camera production process that underpin traditional live streaming and live TV.
Rolling with the changes – towards fluid metodologies
…unlike most livestreams, this was not a static recording or a glitchy presentation over Zoom. Watching it felt more like watching a movie, immersive and absorbing, yet easily the most technically sophisticated live dance production I’ve seen since theaters closed.
New York Times
Central to the approach was forming a tight collaborative creative partnership between Wim and our DoP, Emma Dalesman. The rehearsal/creation process was led through a collaboration between choreographer and cinematographer. Together they were tasked with generating material, not for the proscenium, but for the cinema frame, exploiting the opportunities the live camera presented in this context. Adapting and hybridising methodologies also meant combining the process of theatre technical rehearsal with that of camera rehearsals for live TV, where the camera crew would learn and rehearse in much the same way as the dancers. The crew were in fact choreographed by Wim alongside the dancers.
However, the core approach is not having a set approach – not until you understand what it is that you want to make. For the follow up to Draw From Within, Rooms, director/choreographer Jo Stromgren conceived an onnovative work bespoke to the process and form we were inventing. On his production, the set consited of three literal rooms constructed sdjacent to each other that the camera tracked across laterally. Each room was the dressed and redressed in real while off camera for scene changes , making for an exciting but, for the crew, hugely demanding production. This demanded further iteration of the approach developed for Draw From Within.
Two more productions followed Rooms in 2021, a double bill consisting of Eye Candy by Imre and Marne Van Opstal and Rouge by Marion Motin, and finally an incredibly moving and inventive contribution from Rambert’s Artistic Director, Benoit Swan Poufer working with Rambert 2, Note To Self, on which I also contributed video projections. All required further innovation built on the foundation established on Draw From Within.
Audience development – the Rambert Home Studio
Rambert also saw the opportunity to innovate around audience development. The company has an incredible asset in a well resourced building to which they have full access beyond its three dance studios. These spaces were fully exploited on this production, which presented its own technical challenges. However, as a dance company, Rambert doesn’t have a box office operation. They have no ticket buying base but do have an audience, the relationship with which is mediated by venues.
Any marketing professional will tell you that minimising the barriers to fulfillment is fundamental to any buying experience and yet Rambert created a number of steps towards engaging with the show. The company’s realtionship with multiple venues around the world, to which they would have toured in 2020, provided an global box office base. The venues would sell the tickets, but with an eye on the future beyond the pandemic, Rambert would require their audience to register with their new digital platform, Rambert Home Studio (now Rambert Plus), in order to redeem tickets and watch the performance. The “…Home Studio” is now providing Rambert, via an offer of online classes and exclusive content in the form of podcasts and short film, with a direct relationship with their audience.
Rambert understood that providing a live online experience, not a replacement for attending the theatre, was going to be key to that engagement. This meant performing the show three times for the various time zones. They opted very early, much to the consternation of some, not to deliver one live show and event broadcast the recording of that first show ‘as-live’. This paid dividends in the nature of the audience engagement with the piece, evidenced by the buzz generated on social media, and the necessarily exhilarating experience of the performers. Some audience members even paid to catch it twice!
Necessity, the mother of invention
I’ve written elsewhere about how, in the midst of the tragedy and hardships, it feels like we’re in a new golden age of pioneering creativity in digital creation, especially at its intersection with live performance. A period not seen since some people in Wall Street and the City of London started blowing into that infamous dot-com bubble at the turn of the millenium, appropriating and all but ending the socially engaged creative experimentation of the ’90s.
A crisis always focuses attention on that which needs fixing and with that emerges an appetite for innovation and change. In amongst all of the social upheaval and hardship of 2020-21 there is cultural innovation that could give us something to look forward to.