Digitizing Performance

Dance and Digital Media by Maya Gundepudi

Capstone Project Website: https://mayagundepudi.com/featured-project/

Digitizing Performance is a dance video using video editing and visual effects. I chose a song and instructed the dancers to film a one-to-two-minute video of original choreography and improvisation. Then, I interviewed each of them to get a better idea of their process and what was going on in their mind for their creation. Collaborating with the dancers allowed me to understand each of their unique processes and stories. My job was then to highlight them in their different ways while also creating a unified, interesting video project. I used Touch Designer for the first time to create visual effects to manipulate the videos then cut everything together in Premiere. In addition, I showcased my project in website format with blog posts documenting my process, the final rendition of the video, and content to learn about the dancers.

I want the audience to come away feeling the depth of emotions juxtaposed with their fleetingness. The video jumps from dancer to dancer and fades in and out of effects but it’s all one performance; it’s all one human experience. Each dancer embodies their own unique story. Whether it’s focused on dynamics and instrumentals visualized by color fragments that follow the dancer’s movement or about deep feelings of love and loss depicted by dark backgrounds with colored outlines, the effects enhance these stories. At the final climax, the dancers flow into all the colors and converge into each other to communicate this universal human experience.