I met with Anna in December after I found out I could work on Barefoot as part of my class with Diane and she caught me up with her project's progress since I last met with them for the Art Squish a few months prior.
Because we only had a few weeks before the show, she asked me to design and build just two or three sculptures for the space that the performers could integrate into the performance they were already starting to create and practice. Anna gave me a copy of "the Flow", which was a chart outlining and sequencing the mood and setting changes through the dance piece, which was what they started working on. The flow worked as follows:
Arrival - the audience arrives and takes off coats and shoes, goes through a portal, is handed a small, warm rock to hold, and proceeds into the space.
Ocean/Womb - seaweed, fetal position, underwater, waves
Washing up on Shore - Raven enters
Curious - raven explores the beach
Encounter - Movers encounter one another, contact, paint each other with clay
Storm - Raven conjures a storm and audiences are moved around the space
Mountain - Raven lands, dance with audience begins, moment of suspension
Volcano - Dancers rumble audiences and shake them
Sunrise - Singer moves through the space and sings
Desert - Shrivel, dryness, parched
Rain - Slow pattering at first, becomes a torrent
River - Everyone invited to put rocks onto the cairn
Departing - people leave the space
From this flow chart, and after talking with Anna about her ideas for the space, I had to design some sculptures that could perform multiple roles including: integrating into the dance, allowing the space to be broken up and more visually pleasing, and allowing the dancers and audiences to interact with and around them.
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