March 23, 2014

Progress on the Soiree Sforza Film 

This afternoon, after a productive fifth rehearsal weekend in the Unsworth Studio, Anca, Sues, Patrick, Ross, Ken and myself traveled across the Sydney Harbour bridge to the studio of Paul Nichola, who had been hired to film and edit last year’s production of Soiree Sforza. (July 2013)

Paul, a noted film-maker  showed us the almost finished product and explained what technical processes he had used to transform the raw studio footage into a more polished cinema-style look. 

We were all enthralled with what we saw.  But what was underlying all this beautiful imagery were all the beautiful images that the dance artists had created originally.

It is interesting that dancers don’t always understand and appreciate what they give out to an audience, what images they present, and what effect it has on them. They don’t always understand the images because they are the image!  

For the first time they all saw this in Paul’s edited version. Dancers may seem glamorous and supra-human, but really they are mostly humble and hard-working. There is no real glamour to what they do --- they don’t lead glamorous lifestyles--- but they do produce glamour….! Interesting, this word glamour. It actually appears in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and is still in current dictionaries referring to witchery and images produced by magic. 

Yes, that’s Australian Dance Artists and Ken Unsworth……! 

(But I do declare a conflict of interest!)

Norman Hall 

Founding director and creative collaborator

March 23, 2014