Dance Short Film | Marionettist | Research

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Why marionettist?

A disabled person?

Does it make sense?

WHAT IS DANCE FOR ME

Okay... I think for many of us a word "Dance" means physical movements in certain sequence, a beautiful way to express emotions, and maybe for someone it is just an art-form and nothing else. For me personally, it was a passion - I loved to be there in an action. When I dance my body never lies. Expressed emotions is in those movements. I stopped dancing when I came to study at UCA. Dancing takes time and if you want to do it, you have to do it properly, you have to give all yourself. Once you start doing it, there is no way back, you will like it later, if you did enjoy it before.

For me dance brings me in different stage. I do not know how to describe very well, but when I am in this motion I feel as a different person. I used to dance folk dancing in Latvia for 14 years of my life. I started when I was 5. Our dance culture is very orientated around dances with a partner. It is a very interesting feeling when you know that someone else is moving in same direction, doing same arm movements, jumps and rotations in the same time. It feels wonderful. I have to say, it feels wonderful when you know the choreography. Learning steps, positions and small details like where your head will be looking at takes time. It sometimes was a painful process. I remember being very exhausted in the middle of the training and the teacher says:"Come on, stand up. Let's do it again!" That repeats for many times and the energy is just going down and down. Learning technique for hours, sometimes for days and even weeks. I believe it is just part of what dance actually means! I lived that moment and I think it is all about the passion...

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. - Martha Graham

THE IDEA BEHIND A DISABLED PERSON

I was thinking of the unit a lot, how to make this idea interesting. I thought of folk-dancing, I have archive footage, I could do some dancing myself as well...But nothing was what I want.

On the last days before tutorials with Rachel I thought about possibilities for movements, traces what we leave behind us. The idea itself was not really clear. I wanted something around real life situations and simulating that with a dance movement. Basically using VFX compare two different motions. Human abilities to a car or a fruit that drops on the floor. Seeing how these objects reflects human body.

During the week I came up with another idea. What if human being starts to explore motion. How would it look like in reality if someone has never moved before.....AND I stopped there, because I really needed a background for my research... It simply did not make any sense...I tried to think of options, what is very different from a person who can do anything, use his body with no boundaries?

DISABLED PERSON

Active lifestyle and a disability is not what we try to imagine together.
How does it look? A dance with limits. Limitation is a challenge.

I think, people don't like to think of something they cannot achieve because of different limits. Limits can be financial, physical, emotional and sometimes all together.
Solution?
Many just try to find a way around it.

In my story, a disabled person has found a hobby that takes him or her away from these thoughts in the head. Making puppets and playing with them very much symbolizes control over someones body. Therefore, I wanted to make a twist.
I wanted to show that this marionettist can take control over his or her body in the dream.

At this point, I could also improve my first idea about those traces we leave. I could use VFX to make strings to a human body, just like it is with marionettes.

I had a tutorial with Rachel Palmer and she showed me videos that being disabled does not stop you from dancing. At first I made my statement wrong, I did say, that disability may stop successful dance career for a person whose life has always been around dance.

I looked for videos and changed my statement that disability just puts some limits.

So there is this Dance Company Stopgap. They employ disabled and non-disabled artists who find innovative ways to collaborate. Stopgap value a pioneering spirit and are committed to making discoveries about integrating disabled and non-disabled people through dance.

Our productions seek to offer a window into a parallel world where human interdependence, strength and vulnerability play out with poetic realism.

This is something amazing, people who are disabled and can dance like a dancer from Stopgap just makes me look at myself and think, why I just sit down, I have to be in motion, I CAN AND I HAVE TO!