Role:Performer, Choreographer, Media Designer. Description: Shadow Game (2012) is a multimedia solo with video and text that premiered at the 2012 TEDX:Dirigo. I am currently developing it into an evening length dance-theater mediated solo, Five on Family.
Project Narrative
Shadow Game is what I call a multimedia movement essay, because video projections form one layer of choreography which interact with movement and text to form a semi-narrative performance. While my works are often methodological experiments, they don’t always look “experimental.” In the case of Shadow Game, I used a limited set of gestures and postmodern movement vocabulary as a framework through which to make emotional and energetic transformations. Over the course of the piece, I transform in my imagination from a girl, to a horse, to a woman with a voice. The choreographic meaning of this work emerges not in individual dance movements, but in the transitions and comparisons between sections and elements.
Below is an updated version of Shadow Game, performed in May of 2017 at the Wesleyan Center for the Arts. I was able to develop the relationships with the projections through a special screen that allowed me to pass through it and cast shadows on the rear projection. This show was very special because it was the first time I had performed the piece after the death of my father, Christopher Boggia, in November, 2016.
How Avalanche became Shadow Game, How Shadow Game is becoming Five on Family
Shadow Game (2012) was a development of the choreographic research in Avalanche, and it was my first explicitly autobiographical solo. Headlong Dance Theater sourced much of their choreography in Avalanche from stories that we performers told in the rehearsal process, which they turned into choreographic assignments for us. My assignment, in response to stories I told of growing up on a horse farm, was to do a solo in which I was both a horse and a girl. After developing this material for Avalanche and receiving positive feedback on it, I became curious to see if it could stand on its own. I was interested in developing the theme of father-daughter relationship that had developed for me in Avalanche and was also interested in continuing to experiment with speaking on stage. In order to explore this theme, I interviewed my father and videotaped him training a horse, which project in the piece.
Shadow Game was chosen from among many proposals to premiere at the TEDxDirigo conference in October 2012 and met with a good reception there. Later that year, I performed it at Bates College. In the fall of 2013, I began building on Shadow Game to create Five on Family, a short evening of multimedia movement essays in collaboration with director David Jaffe, Chair of Theater at Connecticut College. Five on Family continues Avalanche’s focus on bringing together creative processes from Theater and Dance. Mediated dance performance has been a strong area of research for me for many years, however this project represents a significant step forward as my first original evening-length solo show as a choreographer, video designer, and performer. I have been developing solos, videos, and computer interfaces that form parts of this show over the past 2 years, and have about 20 minutes of material. It is a slow process, which I organize around other performing opportunities. I have put this project on “hold” for the last 6 months, due to focusing on my other research projects.
Shadow Game Performances
- TEDX:Dirigo 2012. Invited Performer. October 20, 2012.
- Bates College Modern Dance Concert. November 2012.
- Portland First Friday Event at SPACE Gallery, Portland Maine. January 4, 2013.
- SHAKE Wesleyan Faculty Dance Concert. Wesleyan Center for the Arts. Middletown, Connecticut. May 2017.
Five on Family Works In Progress Performances
- Dance Works In Process@95 Empire Blackbox. Providence, Rhode Island. October 20, 2013.
- Maine International Conference on the Arts. Orono, Maine. Invited Performance. October 24, 2013
- East West A Bicoastal Collaboration. Seattle, Washington. June 8, 2014.
Rachel Boggia 