An additional technical challenge for the intimate and emotional Birdsong is that it's staged in the round. So the only real solid surface the eight dancers had to work with was the floor!
Maximizing the dramatic possibilities of the floor, two Barco G5 video projectors are used for overhead light, rigged pointing vertically downwards - via special brackets fabricated by XL. Birdsong is a truly mixed media work that integrates light and sound alongside movement. The 70-minute soundscape is composed by Andy Pink, and artist David Ward - a painter who also works with light - was commissioned to produce special video artwork, further developing ideas of 'light' for the work. Ward used the floor as his canvas and light as his paint.
Adrian Plaut, who's worked with Davies on previous projects, skilfully designed the generic lighting that supports the projected light. Co-ordinating the technical rehearsals is production manager Sam Collins - who's used XL Video on his work with ArtAngel and designed the video system in conjunction with XL's Malcolm Mellows.
The projections fill a 10m x 10m light grey dance-floor in its largest format - and the whole video system is designed to be adaptable for a variety of different venues. The ideal height is 12m with 1:0.8 lenses on the projectors, but in many places, the units will have to be rigged lower. To maximize height in the smaller spaces, a 1m by 1.5m mirror will be used with the projectors rigged sideways bouncing the image down onto the floor.
Video playback material is stored on two Doremi hard drives and is mixed by Collins manually on a Sony XP. Most cues tie in to the sound track, but two sections are improvised live. For Davies, the subtleties and extremities of light and dark are one of the biggest and most suggestive dramatic areas utilized in the work. Projected light - lines, shafts, blocks of colour and shape, and textures on the floor - works with the dancers and helps define the space - as a live physical and fluid element of the work.
Much of the footage created by Ward evolved from 'hand' filming or photographing actual light sources like laser beams or LEDs, rather than it being computer generated. He started work on the piece a year ago and has enjoyed it enormously.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
