Interview with Beatriz Calvo-Merino, part 1: Dance + Neurons = Dance Neuroaesthetics
Dr. Beatriz Calvo-Merino for the end of topics and series of interviews regarding dance, movement, science and technology driven by neurons, muscles, bones, and ideas.
She gave a lecture titled ‘Dancing in the brain: the neuroaesthetic of performing arts’ during coldly December in Zagreb, as a part of the Cognitive of the Performative programme by the Centre for Drama Art aka cdu.
Photo above: Beatriz Calvo-Merino, by Tom Medak (cc)
Photo bellow: Human Brain, taken from sharpbrains.com
Body cinema: Eadweard Muybridge – vintage body mapping
Eadweard Muybridge‘s vision never stops to tickle artists and scientists. No matter of what professions they are: animators, filmmakers, photographers or dancers. Every serious study on movements, motion and locomotions simply starts with his work.
A true master in landscape photography, Muybridge has managed to capture the most trickiest landscape on Earth, and that’s the body in motion.
Body cinema: Films by Etienne-Jules Marey – vintage motion capturing
Tonight I’m gonna have a lot of pioneers on Body Pixel… when talking about body, motion and film, no doubt we can not miss one, and that’s Étienne-Jules Marey.
This scientist, chronophotographer and photography developer firstly started to explore human and animal blood circulation, and then switched to pulse, motion, body rhythm, and heart beating at the end of 19th century. His films are both, science and art of full caliber, now having a wonderful patina and vintage layer.
Body cinema: Returning Home, documentary about Anna Halprin
American postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin has been one of the formative persons in careers of dancers and choreographers such as Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti.
Her approach to kinesthetic awareness is based on natural recharging through movement initiation and ritual embodiment. Therefore, I’ve picked up documentary Returning Home (2002) by Andy Abraham Wilson. In April, 2010 a second documentary on Anna Halprin titled ‘Breath Made Visible‘ was launched in US.
Photo above by Rudy Bender (c): Anna Halprin
From the Experiment in the Environment, 1962
Taken from: l’O petille
Photo bellow: Anna Halprin, video still