Visual Art //

Below: Dance Drawing (Re)mapping Choreography (2009) Multimedia installation, Work Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI [22" Wide x 42" Long (top of table) and 34" High.]

When I was working primarily as a dancer / choreographer I would sketch the design or pattern my choreography made. I found it satisfying to see the dance ‘drawn’ or mapped in this way. I thought of the flat surface of the stage as a two-dimensional surface, like a piece of drawing paper, as if the dancer’s feet sketched a line drawing upon it. While the audience could not actually see the drawing, I believed that they could feel or sense it and that it had an accumulative effect on them. This installation showed the notebooks I kept at the time combined with a portable DVD player playing video of one of the actual works: Collaboration II (1983) Dance, Video, Music. ‘Circle Dance,’ the choreographic element of Collaboration II, is seen below. Some of my 'Dance Drawings,' in relation to a later performance work called  Infinite Field  were published in Performance Research (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) Volume 13, No. 1 (March 2008) 'On Choreography.' Find a link to this article at Writing.

Circle Dance from Barbara Neri on Vimeo.

Below: Homage to our Dancing Ancestors (2009) (16 ft diameter circular floor installation, mixed media.) Created for ‘Dancing at 100’ Celebrating a century of Dance at the University of Michigan 1909-2009 Ann Arbor, MI.

Barbara Neri was asked to create an installation for UM Dance Department's Dancing at 100 celebration. Called "Homage to our Dancing Ancestors,” the installation was inspired by archival photographs of early UM dancers found in the Bentley Historical Library. Neri used the dance floor of Studio B as the place for her mixed media installation, and captured in a swirl of movement recreations of the early dancer’s gauzy costumes and emphera, surrounding seven hand-colored photomontages. The montages, printed on 24” x 36” velum, focused the viewer on close-up details from the old photographs. This dancing installation was part of a larger site specific work choreographed and directed by UM Professor and Chair of Dance Jessica Fogel that traced the history of dance on campus. The performance event happened on June 13th and June 14, 2009 and began in the Chemistry Building, the site of the old Barbour Gymnasium where dance began on campus. The performance and audience then traveled to the current Dance Building, the site of Neri's Installation, and traveled on to North Campus.