Global Corporeality: Collaborative Choreography in Digital Space

Abstract

While in residence Spring 2014 in Riga, Latvia we directed Global Corporeality: Collaborative Choreography in Digital Space, an international intermedial collaborative choreographic project between dance students of the Latvian Academy of Culture (LKA) and Idaho State University (ISU). This provided an opportunity to explore the collaborative possibilities of establishing a virtual community on the internet, where Latvian and American students could work together in composition by interacting online in real time in physical and virtual space. What resulted was a choreographic process and culminating event that existed in time and space in three simultaneous, interconnected performances—each containing elements of the other two. The web-streamed video performances captured the projected performances of live dancers on two different continents, creating an unending, self-referential performance loop. Each of the three simultaneous performance locations were different: in Riga, Latvian dancers performed with a live switched video projection of Latvian/US dancers; in Pocatello, Idaho, the US dancers performed with a projected video of the event; and the live switched video of the two cross-continental performances was available for public consumption on the internet. This article poses the initial concerns that formed the project, presents the process (providing links to YouTube recordings of each session), outlines some of our difficulties and discoveries, and explores some theoretical implications that emerged from Global Corporeality.