Aaron Henderson - Video, Installation and Performance » STREB

STREB – BRAVE

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:49:35 +0000

Projection Design for Touring Performance (2008-2009)

Upcoming Shows

Herberger Theater
Phoenix, AZ (November 6, 2009 & November 7, 2009)

About
STREB – BRAVE is my 3rd collaboration with Elizabeth Streb, and our first to utilize responsive and generative visual content. Using video tracking and custom sensors (developed by Arizona State University’s Arts, Media and Engineering Department), we sense the position, velocity and direction of performers and equipment. This information is used to control responsive and visceral 3-d environments. This project uses openFrameworks, an open source C++ library, to create the real-time visuals, and we’ve created a specialized playback software, “playOF” to facilitate the realities of creating a powerful, responsive and tour-able projection design.

Collaborators
Aaron Henderson – Projection Design
Elizabeth Streb – Choreography
Mark Beasley – openFrameworks/Python programming
Byron Lahey – Pendaphone development*
Winslow Burleson – Pendaphone development*

*Arts, Media and Engineering, Arizona State University

Tour History
Prospect Park Bandshell (Brooklyn NY), The State Theater (New Brunswick, NJ), SLAM (Brooklyn, NY), University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI)

Catapult Review – Village Voice

admin — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:34:20 +0000

Village Voice Review of Catapult
Elizabeth Streb Spins Her ‘Whizzing Gizmo’
by Deborah Jowitt

“…Aaron Henderson’s vivid projection design shows us some numbers from overhead, occasionally multiplying images into kaleidoscopic patterns. Shapes swim in and out of focus. The short sentences in Laura Flanders’s libretto are projected kookily in addition to being heard on tape. You might want to memorize them for your next science test, as well as for a clue to the impending action (sample: “There is no stasis, only a sequence of situations”)…”

Photograph by Tom Caravaglia

Read full review

SLAM SHOW X Review – New York Times

admin — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:54:52 +0000

New York Times Review of SLAM SHOW X
Gravity May Eventually Triumph, but Not Without a Fight
by Roslyn Sulcas

Photograph by Richard Termine

“…In “Moon” the dancers move on their sides on the floor, but a video projects them onto a screen as if upright, offering the semblance of liberation from gravity. A similar technique is used for one of the program’s best pieces, “Orbit,” in which two performers are suspended in harnesses, around a central pole, their bodies parallel to the ground while a film shows them upright. As they somersault, fly and walk around and over each other, they tumble weightlessly through the air on the film.

This is Ms. Streb at her ingenious best…”

Read full article

Fall for Dance Festival Review – New York Times

admin — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:08:19 +0000

New York Times Review of Fall for Dance Festival Review
Challenging Gravity With the Grace of a Single Hand
by Roslyn Sulcas

“…The best of these was “Moon,” a clever trompe l’oeil that projects the movement of seven dancers sliding prone across a waxed floor, onto a screen. The effect is apparent liberation from the constraints of gravity or the limits of human strength, and the charm lies partly in a cultivated illusion of effort. In one sequence the dancers form a human ladder, “wobbling” on a single hand of the person beneath, yet impossibly angled out into space…”

Read full review

Photograph by Stephanie Berger

Miscellaneous STREB Reviews

admin — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 15:43:31 +0000

“…three dancers abseil up and down a wall, leaping and turning as a vertiginous video projection behind them creates the illusion that they are astronauts, jumping tens of feets with each leap as the planet recedes and returns behind them…”

excerpted from Catapult! in The Hijinks of Tara and Molly

STREB VS GRAVITY

aaronhenderson — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:00:02 +0000

Projection Design for Touring Performance (2006-2008!)

Real-time, algorithmic and pre-recorded video unite with Elizabeth Streb’s aesthetic of grace and danger. The screen provides alternate viewpoints, both micro and macro, for the action at hand. Archival footage and reactive software fill the 20′ x 20′ screen

About the show:

“By exploring the frontiers of performance space, and creating works that reflect the spirit of our technological age, Ms. Streb is carrying dance into a new dimension.”
- The New York Times

Elizabeth Streb’s trademark risky choreography combines the visceral impact of extreme sports with the poetry and split-second timing of dance. Exploding with the suspense and energy of near-misses and imminent crashes, STREB Extreme Action’s daring performers explore the boundaries of force, gravity, action and reaction. Whether flying, falling, or seemingly suspended in mid-air, STREB fearlessly challenges nature, creating a new aesthetic of grace and danger. In this gripping new show, action-architect Elizabeth Streb takes her audience ringside for a match-up of human pitted against the phenomenal forces of everyday physical action. STREB materializes the unseen, ever-present, air-traffic controllers of our universe and puts those invisible action partners center stage.

Collaborators:
Elizabeth Streb: Action Architect/Choreographer
Michael Casseli: Set Design
Laura Flanders: Librettist
Aaron Henderson: Projection Design
Shelly Sabel: Lighting Designer
Maxim Safioulline: Sound Designer
Justin D’Apolito: Technical Director

Tour History:
World Premier:
July 12-15, 2006. La Guardia Drama Theater, Lincoln Center Festival, New York, NY

The Eccles Center for the Performing Arts (Park City, UT), Walton Art Center (Fayetteville, AR), The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (Great Barrington, MA), Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT), FirstWorks Providence (Providence, RI), Williams Center for the Arts (Lafayette College), International Festival of Art & Ideas (New Haven, CT), Jackie Gleason Theater (Miami Beach, FL), Kravis Center (West Palm Beach, FL), Proctors Theatre (Schenectady, NY), Napa Opera House (Napa, CA), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), Bumbershoot (Seattle, WA), Britt Festival (Jacksonville, OR)

STREB – Wild Blue Yonder

aaronhenderson — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:00:02 +0000

Projection Design for Touring Performance (2004-2005)

Blue Land Media and I worked on the video for Elizabeth Streb’s homage to the magic and mayhem of early flight.

About the show:
It is an age-old human dream to stretch the body into space and to venture into unknown territory where gravity just might lapse. Wild Blue Yonder is an action event for the rough of heart and deep of longing – people of all ages who are curious about escaping earth. STREB is inspired by Wilbur and Orville Wright, who a century ago made the first powered flight; by Amelia Earhart, who spanned the Atlantic Ocean; by Chuck Yaeger, who broke the sound barrier; by the Chinese MiG pilots who shrank the turning radiuses of their dog-fighting planes to create a physically impossible G-force; by any astronaut who’s ever braved the vomit comet; and every kid, regardless of age, who is willing to go where humans haven’t…To all these, STREB pays homage.

Wild Blue Yonder is the story of the actions people do, and the places people go when they dream. It is a story that requires the impossible, so with action contraptions we expand the body’s reactions, and we duet with nature’s forces of movement. Action, movement, courage, invention, and machines, these are what have made flying dreams real. The horse, the rider, the wheel, the motor, the car, the plane, the jet, the computer, all in their time were the next utterly impossible future dream, always defying the wisdom of the age.

Wild Blue Yonder requires the audience to have the experiences they have when they dream. In these dreams the impossible and absurd is real. Humans do fly. With the machines we build, the airplanes we fly, the unprotected ledges we jump from, our bodies take on that adventure dream. The Action show demonstrates how the extreme idea happens. STREB will take the audience into the wild blue yonder merely by witnessing what we do. Fast, Hard. And Out of Control. Radical Actions.
Elizabeth Streb

Collaborators:
Elizabeth Streb: Chreography
Michael Casseli: Set Design
Aaron Henderson and Blue Land Media: Projection Design
Laura Flanders: Librettist
Noe and Ivan Espana: Action Collaborators

Tour History
Wolf Trap (Vienna, VA), Napa Opera House (Napa, CA), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), Bumbershoot (Seattle, WA), Britt Festival (Jacksonville, OR), Jazz at Lincoln Center (New York, NY), City Center (New York, NY), The Oriente Occidente Festival (Verona & Trento, Italy), University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY), (Boulder, CO), Wausau Area Performing Arts Foundation (Wausau, Wisconsin)