Hyperdistanced
Choreography: Stephanie Miracle, in collaboration with the dancers
Music: Ramin Roshandel
Costume Designer: Margaret Wenk-Kuchlbauer
Film: Co-directed by Stephanie Miracle and Auden Lincoln-Vogel
Cinematography: Auden Lincoln-Vogel
Dancers: Leigh Durian, Ianka Hou, Jessie Madden, Katherine Shamdin, Kate Vincek, Ellen Welch
Dolly Grip: Stephanie Miracle
Photos
In this season of separation, sanitation, and safety protocols Hyperdistanced was born. A dance film containing collective questions and playful investigations into the meaning of proximity and connection during this time.
"Gatherings outdoors are the least risky." These words were ringing in my head as I decided to firmly commit to creating a new work with these six dancers exclusively in an outdoor space. The first week of rehearsals it rained and poured and rained and poured, so in those early days we met via Zoom. After the rain stopped, we discovered a 7-level parking ramp, which became the haven for our project; offering the safety of an open-air setting and sense of privacy, without the interruption of random onlookers. This location gave perspective, higher vantage points, and the ability to see far distances across campus. And most importantly it offered us a VAST space, both horizontally and vertically, for us to move together in.
"[The parking ramp has] a kind of exile that has birthed its own site-specific opportunities and in a more metaphorical sense that, like quarantine, parking garage is not really a destination or a mode of transit--it's lower than those things--it's a kind of anonymous cavernous place where you put a form of transit--it's not really any place or time, it's just a kind of waiting zone. It's also kind of an interesting gray area between inside and outside (architecturally) and between public and private (in the sense that it's a semi-public space to put privately-owned objects)." - Lincoln-Vogel in conversation with Miracle and Roshandel
To counter the expansive space of the parking ramp we harnessed the digital eye - iPhone, webcam (Zoom), and eventually Auden’s camera, as a tool for hyper closeness and the possibility of perceived proximity closer than the regulated 6ft social distance limit. As a kind of "bonus directors cut DVD," we offer three additional video documents from this process:
1.) Testing testing - an experimental version of the film before Auden joined the process.
2.) Hyperdistanced (Open) - excerpt of original choreography filmed from start to finish on the 6th and 7th Levels of the IMU Parking Ramp. Thanks to Alex Bush for filming.
3.) Hyperdistanced (Loading Dock) - excerpt of a 2-hour performance in the context of the special event produced by Quixotic and Hancher. The original choreography was performed multiple times with predetermined improvisational trios.
Immense gratitude to all the dancers who were ready and willing at every twist and turn of the process - woot woot CLAP CLAP CLAP! To Auden and Ramin, thank you for diving into this wild collaboration, it has been an honor and pleasure! Thank you to Alex Bush, Mindy Myers, Rebekah Kowal, Gabriel Anderson, and Eloy Barragán for witnessing our work at various points along the way. Special love to Jimmy and Christopher Miracle for your patience and support on those long rehearsal nights.
Stephanie Miracle is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Dance at University of Iowa. Stephanie's choreography has been described as, “iconic and nuanced…with an irreverence that makes you smile unconsciously,” (Rick Westerkamp review of GROOVE, 2014). Her projects have been presented in Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Russia, New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. She was the recipient of a '14/'15 Fulbright Performing Arts Fellowship to study the lineage of Pina Bausch in Germany. Her collaborative piece Drafting Plan was awarded Best Duo at Barnes Crossing Festival 2015 in Cologne and at the 2016 SzoloDuo Festival in Budapest. In 2017, Paper Piece received a US State Department grant for residency in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and a Trust for Mutual Understanding Grant to tour the US in 2019.
Stephanie's dance films have been shown at Lincoln Center Dance for Camera, EnCore: Dance on Film, Reutlingen Museum, Iowa International Dance Festival, and RAD Dance Fest. She is the director of the live-cinema public performance experiment Fakers Club and was the guest choreographer for Folkwang Tanzstudio's 2018/19 season. Her full evening work wilderness tender was recently described as, “sixty minutes of pure pleasure,” (Ruhrzeitung 2019).
Up next is the release of The Parking Space Project, a new Public Art a site-specific, interactive listening experience for a mundane parking garage, co-created with Ramin Roshandel and Steven Willis with funding from the City of Iowa City.
Ramin Roshandel’s compositional work is based around incorporating ‘experience’ as a fundamental concept through a non-experimental approach in performance. Considering phenomena such as instability, cultural identity, and communicational language on one hand, and being inspired by Iranian music microtones as a setār (an Iranian instrument) player on the other, has led him to consider indeterminate, improvisatory, and abstract structures in his music to contrast or converge with post- or non-tonal forms.
Roshandel has performed as a setār soloist in the premiere of Jean-François Charles’ opera, Grant Wood in Paris. Additionally, he was awarded a 2019 University of Iowa Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio summer scholarship and is a New Music on the Point alumnus. His pieces have been performed by The JACK quartet and LIGAMENT, as well as at the Midwest Composers Symposium (MCS) and the Exchange of Midwest Collegiate Composers (EMCC).
He is currently in his third year as a doctoral student in the Composition program at the University of Iowa, where he has studied under Josh Levine and Sivan Cohen-Elias and currently working with David Gompper. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition from the University of Tehran and a Bachelor of Arts in Iranian Music Performance from Tehran University of Art.
His articles on Hossein Alizadeh’s Neynavā and Elliott Carter’s Dialogues have been published in Persian journals.
Auden Lincoln-Vogel is an American animator and experimental filmmaker. His work spans from animations about aliens to expanded cinema performances using modified upright pianos. He currently lives in Iowa, where he is an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa. More of his work can be found at audenlincolnvogel.com.