Masterclass with Johannes Berringer

Today I took the opportunity to participate in an audiovisual dance masterclass at the University with Johannes Berringer, proclaimed professer of Brunel University. It was in all, an entirely exhausting and interesting experience. We started by introducing ourselves and laying out our reasons for coming to the Masterclass which ranged from "I love dance" to "I want to experience the interactivity of technologies within a traditional theatre space." We then progressed into a rather boring, yoga-based warm up and then got down to the task in hand.

The first hour of the session was focusing on the relationship between performer and camera to explore how one can use the camera to both document and to perform as we use the different aspects of film to highlight different parts of the body and to explore movement and filming techniques in an entirely improvisational manner. Wanting to be quite selfish in this session as we were working with a man who was a master of his field, I took as much of the limelight as I could. At first I explored filming and wanting to be quite artistic, I moved the camera around quite a lot in order to follow the movements of the performer. However as this was improvisational, I couldn't quite sync with what she was doing and it resulted in the camera angles looking odd and off focus as well as the fact that I didn't stand in front of her because I didn't want to intrude upon her performance and also block the audience's view of the performer. Of course, this is all valuable experience and whilst I was annoyed that I hadn't performed to my full potential with the use of the camera, I can put this down to the fact that I was working with brand new technology and my inexperience with filming technology anyway.

After this experience with the technology I then took it upon myself to dance, to perform. Dancing is not something I am comfortable doing without alcohol and a nightclub so this was a real test of confidence for me. I wasn't dancing in a hip-hop "Single Ladies" manner, but rather in an erratic exploration of the space. I was the first member in the group to be given music as a part of my performance which I was both anxious and excited about as it meant that I felt my performance had to be more dancy, but also that the music would provide a more definitive stimulus. The music I had was of a sort of technologic, grungy type music. Well, it was more soundscape-y. So I immediately thought of robots and proceeded to move about in a "manic" manner as instructed by Johannes, with my arms moving like that of a robot. Being an improvised piece I didn't have time to think about utilising my body to create impressive shapes but instead I just ran about. However I was joined by a second year dance student who promptly showed me up. Fantastic. However the movement kinda worked and I was rather proud of the piece. One thing that did kinda make it difficult for the camera man was that I was moving quite rapidly. But hey, that was the point of the exercise. Right?

After this we then had to mix all the old material into new material with a live feed being shown on one projector screen and then another of the old material on another screen and then one camera filming the whole thing in process. This was an entirely complex process as fat as I was concerned. However, now, rather than using just one or two members of the group, all 20 of us were now involved in either lighting, sound, documentation, voice, performance, editing and filming. My task for this last hour was to provide voice with a friend. A sort of extraneous voice over from the performance. Since Johannes was really bad at telling the people involved exactly what he was looking for in the performance my friend and I just made up what we were going to say on the spot and ended up conversing alongside lift music. However we were told that this was not what he wanted and we therefore had to work on making what we were saying more of a commentary on the performance but with more of an argumental edge to it. Once again, this was not what Johannes wanted and he informed us he was instead looking for more poetic work.

This is where the session ended. After three hours what did I feel I had learned? Not a lot. Did I feel it was worth my time? 100%. It was not meant to be educational but rather informative and inspiring. I now have much more to take away for my performance and documentation module and am therefore much happier for the record. I feel without this experience I wouldn't have developed my documentation skills as much either. Kinda a win win situation really. Apart from how 'prima donna' Johannes was. But hey, I guess he has the experience to be... demanding.

Catch y'all sometime soon.