CLIP is a full-length dance work whose choreography is based on 250 8-second movement excerpts from the history of world animation. Drawing on methods of close embodied study and extensive score-making, the work presents a sustained engagement with hundreds of different animated bodies in film, television, and games from commercial and independent traditions in 39 countries over the past 100+ years. In addition to a recording of the dance piece itself, on this website visitors can find various resources intended to allow for deeper engagement with this source material: a complete written score, with credits and details regarding the animated media used, the video score comprising all 250 clips in order, and a series of scholarly and popular essays bringing animation into conversation with dance, movement, embodiment, race, gender, nationality, and history. All of these supplemental resources are located below.
Animation scholars locate the essence of the medium in movement and life, defining it in relation to the latin verb animare, meaning “to give life to”, or the process of imbuing with movement. Like dance scholars, they have described it as a means of exploring our embodied relations with the world through the creation and transformation of animate forms. In the 21st century, animation has proliferated within film, television, games, special effects, and mobile media, and historians have argued for the recognition of its importance within the development of cinema and other media. CLIP aims to acknowledge the pervasiveness of animation in media, and the links between animations' exploration of form and dances' animation of form. CLIP’s creation process relied on a methodology developed by Immer Collective for kineasthetically examining "real" bodies staged in various cultural archives (such as zoos, natural history museums, and gardens). Beginning development of the piece during the Covid-19 pandemic, a moment that encouraged virtual modes of research, creation, performance, and spectatorship, Immer adapted this methodology to examine animated bodies accessible through online platforms such as YouTube and Dailymotion. Each of the piece’s 250 phrases of movement is an interpretation of the unique forms, rhythms, and dynamics present in the given ‘clip’ of source material. Linked together, they form an ever-shifting kinetic response to a series of historical and cultural heterogeneous media artifacts
Choreographer: Jonathan Osborn
Dancers: Danielle Baskerville and Johanna Bergfelt
Filmmaker: Hannah Schallert
Dramaturg: Rosemary James
Composer: Benjamin Boles
Costume Designer: Alicia Zwicewicz
Lighting Designer: A.J. Morra
Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council
This project and web page were created as part of Canada Council’s Digital Now program, an initiative offering grants to arts groups, collectives, and organizations to adapt existing works or create new ones to be shared virtually with audiences.
