Charming iPad App Lets You Choreograph a Famed Dance Genius

Dancing is a great, visceral pleasure. Watching a dance performance–one where you’re packed stiffly in a seat alongside a few hundred other audience members, viewing the action up on stage from a distance–can be, well, the opposite of great and visceral. But maybe it’s not the dance that’s the problem. Maybe it’s the setting. Dot Dot Dot, a new app conceived by the famed designer J. Abbott Miller, plucks a renowned contemporary dancer from the stage and drops him right on your iPad’s screen–and then gives you control of the action.

The app, produced by the non-profit 2wice Arts Foundation and available for a buck, showcases Tom Gold, a celebrated dancer and choreographer formerly of the New York City Ballet, in a routine choreographed, scored, and packaged specifically for the tablet. It gives you three different ways to view the performance. The first, and the most fun, starts with a grid of nine dots. Tap one and Gold materializes on top of it, shown from above as he bounces to an accompanying fragment of violin. Tap another dot and a duplicate Gold appears, bringing another layer of movement and music to the scene. Tap a few more dots and things get even busier.
“I wanted to give agency to the user but also show Tom as an opinionated performer.”
Swiping sideways takes you through a few variations on this overhead view, with Gold (and his digital doppelgangers) playfully bouncing between the dots on screen. Swiping vertically takes you to another view entirely. Here, we see things straight-on; the flat black dots have become columns and we’re eye level with the dancer. It’s a more traditional way to watch the performance, but at least you have a front row seat. The third view, after another vertical swipe, brings us even closer, with the camera following Gold fluidly as he bobs and weaves between the featureless black pillars.

Essentially, instead of viewing the proceedings from a single, fixed point, as we would in an auditorium, the app moves us through three distinct perspectives. But the presentation is cleverly enticing. The first, interactive view draws you in. You see these dots on screen, you poke at them, and you’re rewarded with song and dance. You’re not watching a contemporary dance routine; you’re playing with an app, and you love apps. Gold isn’t a performer; he’s a UI element. Only then, once you swipe into the other sections, does Dot Dot Dot drop the interactivity and move your full focus to the art.



“I wanted to give a sense of agency to the user but also to show Tom as an opinionated performer in his own right,” says Miller, a partner at Pentagram who has previously experimented with interactive dance in an app called Fifth Wall. “In a sense the overhead views exist in the realm of play, whereas the stage views move into performance.”

The diversion is brief–the choreographed snippets range in duration from a few seconds to a minute or so–but it’s fun. More importantly, it puts the tablet to use in a way we don’t see as often as we should, not as a vessel for consuming existing forms of art but as a fresh new medium altogether. For Abbott, who serves as editor and designer for the visual arts magazine 2wice, the iPad represents a new stage. “As someone who has collaborated for decades with performers through creating magazines, the tablet gives me an entirely new canvas to work on”–one, he adds, with “an amazingly built-in distribution system.” That part’s important, too. You may not be eager to spend a night at a recital, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy a dash of contemporary dance downloaded from the App Store.

'So You Think You Can Dance' Tweaks Elimination After Criticism

So You Think You Can Dance is tweaking its results delivery once again.

The Fox series, which lost its elimination episode at the start of last season, drew criticism from fans earlier this week when two competitors (Carlos Garland and Brittany Cherry) were voted off at the top of the hour -- and then required to perform the week's dance.

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Judge and executive producer Nigel Lythgoe announced on Thursday evening that the series will not keep that format moving forward. "We're taking your advice by revealing America's vote in the beginning and judging at the end," Lythgoe wrote on Twitter. "I hope it will inspire the bottom 4? Thank you."

Now, in lieu of anyone performing in vain, the bottom four will have the opportunity to perform the week's selected choreography and "dance for their lives" before the judges decide which two will leave the show.

Lythgoe lamented the lumping together of the performance and results shows when speaking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year.

"I still don't think we got it right last year," he said. "It's a tough call. It's much easier with Idol when you say, 'There it is, America. You vote and tomorrow we'll let you know.' Maybe we just let the judges [choose], so there's a result at the end of the night. But I know how much people love supporting the dancers."

Stars Support 'Black Swan' Choreographer's Dance Company at Bel Air Fundraiser

Benjamin Millepied and Natalie Portman

L.A. Dance Project took the stage on Solstice Eve at a private home in Bel Air to raise funds for the year-old dance company headed by Benjamin Millepied, the French dancer who also choreographed the ballet sequences in Black Swan.

Millepied thanked his wife (and Black Swan star) Natalie Portman for her “endless love and support,” adding “I’m so happy you still like dance after Black Swan.”

Portman admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that, despite her hands-on ballet work in the film, she’s no ballet expert. “Dancers know I’m not a pro, but a lot of others definitely make the mistake.”

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Supporters at the intimate summer soiree included Aaron Sorkin, Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Reese Witherspoon and CAA’s Jim Toth, Giada de Laurentiis, artist Barbara Kruger, and Black Swan producer Mike Medavoy, who underscored his dance cred by noting he was one of Mikhail Baryshnikov's first friends when the Russian dancer moved Stateside.

After dinner and the performance by the LADP, revelers hit the dance floor themselves, including Rashida Jones, Millepied and Portman.

 

Plenty of folks think S. Ogden woman can dance

SOUTH OGDEN — One South Ogden young woman has beaten out thousands of dancers across the nation to become one of the Top 20 contestants on Fox’s hit show “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Nineteen-year-old Malece Miller has intrigued the judges with her mystique, strength and incredible flexibility, said Kassie Searle, an instructor at Infinity Dance in Ogden who choreographed Miller’s audition dance.

“A lot of her strengths come from her acrobatic ability because she can do a lot of cool tricks that other people only wish they could do,” she said.

“It’s been fun to come up with ideas for her because I know she is able to do them.”

Along with her gymnastic abilities is Miller’s sense of intrigue when she dances, said Mandy Shaw, owner of Infinity Dance, who has taught Miller for several years.

“She is almost a mystery, with the ability to attain the goal and don’t give up.”

Miller’s mom, Wendy Simonson, said the best advice her daughter received going into the show was, because the dancers are pushed so hard, to take a pillow with her throughout the process and sleep every chance she could get.

Because of the intense training schedule, Simonson gets only brief moments a day or two a week to visit with her daughter. Many days, Miller begins rehearsing for the show at 6 a.m. and doesn’t finish until 10 p.m. — and that’s on top of several sleepless nights.

Rehearsals and show commitments keep her so busy that she couldn’t break free to speak with the Standard-Examiner.

“Malece says she is exhausted, but she is strong and humble and very grateful to be where she is, so that keeps her going,” Simonson said.

While growing up, their family came upon hard times, but Simonson was determined to keep her daughter in dance.

Malece has been dancing since she was 5, and there is no stopping her passion for the activity, said Simonson, who spent extra hours cleaning houses and the dance studio to help keep her daughter going.

Having the sacrifices pay off is almost surreal, Simonson said.

“Seeing her dance on TV is unexplainable when you stop and think about how crazy it is that your baby is dancing in front of the world,” she said.

“I want this so bad for her that it is almost impossible to watch. I’m her biggest fan, so every time the judges turn to critique her, I hold my breath.

“Dancing for Malece isn’t just about dancing. Dance is a language for her. It is how she communicates with the world. She cannot even take more than two steps without putting some kind of twirl or hand wave into it.”

Something that stood out about Miller’s dance style over the years, her teacher said, was her ability to understand movement.

“It’s almost like it’s in her bones and she and the music become one,” Shaw said. “She has a way of drawing things out and can make you hear every part of the music, whether it is hip-hop or contemporary.”

Shaw said Miller is trained in every dance style, but contemporary is the one she used to audition for the show.

“Contemporary tends to be more emotional, with a deeper style of dance with a lot of story to it, which is something she is really drawn to.”