Wednesday 5 – Monday 10 April

AXIS - Anatomy of Space is a dance art site-specific audiovisual installation (Asian premiere of the installation version). It is created by Daniel Belton in collaboration with Joyce Beetuan Koh, PerMagnus Lindborg, Tanya Carlson, Jac Grenfell, Donnine Harrison, and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, SYO Singers, soloists, and Good Company Arts (New Zealand). Commissioned with support from Creative New Zealand and Asia-New Zealand Fund.

The site-specific installation in Singapore features kinematic sculptures by Jim Murphy.

AXIS - Anatomy of Space

idea |

AXIS - Anatomy of Space - creates a unique fusion of music and dance film for dome cinema, premiered 20 March 2017 in Otago Planetarium, New Zealand. AXIS is a collaboration between Good Company Arts and renowned artists Joyce Beetuan Koh, PerMagnus Lindborg, Tanya Carlson, Jac Grenfell, Donnine Harrison and artists of the Royal New Zealand Ballet with Daniel Belton.

We are each made up of photons. Photons are particles of light. Light is inspiration. Every space has an ‘anatomy’. The visualisation of sound for AXIS arrives through a music notation system synchronised to the generation of pure light - expanded points and lines. This virtual acoustic architecture creates a dialogue with the dancing figure - illuminating song cycles in a cosmic choreography of light. Optical devices, along with mapping and sound technologies alter how the human body is perceived in space and in time. Sequenced code renders breathing geometry that is traversed by the dancer in motion during this 35 minute digital transmission. The dancers are conductors travelling through a space tensioned with the happening of projected light.
We are story-telling beings as much as we are electrical beings. AXIS opens thresholds of dimension and leads us to more possibilities for reading space. Through the eye of the camera we expose the interior essence of movement, andinvestigate how gravity can affect a choreographic relationship to line. AXIS creates a new search with the human figure in space - as projected film and processed sound performance combine. Nothing is in stasis.

process |

Physics defines everything in existence as either matter or energy - matter being the tangible part that we can see, hear, touch, smell and taste - energy being the intangible phenomenon that moves matter. Matter is made up of fields of electromagnetic energy, vibrating at innumerable different frequencies. Einstein said that matter can be changed into energy and vice versa. In essence they are the same thing in a different form. The process of shifting energy to matter, and matter to energy is expressed in AXIS.

Human beings are standing wave patterns of energy - we are complex harmonics. Our bodies are solid, but from another frequency, we might look like filaments of light transmitting as energy fields. Ultimately our physical bodies are the products of wave actions. In this new work, AXIS - anatomy of space, the dancer signals expanding consciousness. Polarities of dark and light, of contraction and
expansion; the ways light affects us, and the way we engage the edges of light, create liminal zones at the edge of understanding and knowing. We are on the edge of shadow when we engage in the geometry of light. Reflections and refractions occur in response to the pulse of human presence.

Good Company Arts
“The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough”   –  Thomas Carlyle
“People are by nature phototropic — they move toward light”   –  Christopher Alexander

 

DanielDaniel Belton originates from a visual arts and contemporary dance background.  He is a scholarship graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance.  Daniel performed extensively in New Zealand and Europe during the 1990’s including with Douglas Wright Dance Company, Kim Brandstrup and Arc Dance Company, Irek Mukhamedov, Lindsay Kemp Company, Compania Vicente Saez,  Aletta Collins Dance Company, Tanz Company Gervasi, Royal Opera Covent Garden, and Glyndebourne.  Daniel has established an international reputation for his choreography and film.  His visionary projects for dance, theatre, opera, cinema, galleries, building facades and digital spaces have made selection to many international arts festivals - receiving finalist nominations and awards.  Daniel has directed over 30 projects with Donnine Harrison since the foundation of their company, Good Company Arts.  As an independent artist he has been commissioned by the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Black Grace Dance Company, New Zealand School of Dance, Body Festival, Filmaka USA, Channel4 UKTV, Dance Films Association New York, Genius Loci Weimar Video Mapping Festival, Zentrum Paul Klee, CINEDANS, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Attakkalari India Biennial, the Oceanic Performance Biennial, and Aarhus Festival Denmark among others.  Continuing to work as a choreographer, performer and pedagogue, Daniel began photographing and editing dance for film from 1997.  In 2003 he was awarded New Zealand Arts Council’s first Choreographic Research Residency at Otago University.  He was appointed Media Artist in Residence at Massey University in 2008 to continue this research, and in 2010 won the Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship.  Invitations for Daniel to teach and present his work have seen him attend and participate in the Prague Quadrennial, Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec, Bauhaus University, Ryerson University, Leeds Metropolitan University, Codarts, xm:lab and NOW DanceSaar Festival, Romaeuropa Festival, Millennium Performing Arts London and the World Stage Design Festival. In 2015 Daniel was awarded an Arts Foundation New Zealand Laureate. https://vimeo.com/dbel

COMPANY BIO: Daniel Belton and Good Company: Good Company Arts was founded in 1997. The company produces dance theatre works and creates films featuring choreography with fine arts. Project based and working from Dunedin, New Zealand - the award winning group has an international reputation for their unique multi-disciplinary approach involving commissions of visual art, couture, design, new music, animation, video mapping and film. Recognised artists and specialist technologists work collaboratively with artistic director Daniel Belton and producer Donnine Harrison. As cinema, installation and live performance the work has been celebrated by audiences in New Zealand, the Pacific, the Americas, Britain, Europe and Asia.
 www.goodcompanyarts.com