choreography, creative process, Dance Film, Inspiration, lenses, painting, physical thinking, research, thesis

REVEAL

Tara Burns
December 17, 2020

Where are the boundaries of your flesh and who determines them? How do we effect our surroundings? What is revealed from our actions? In “Reveal,” Angela Pujolas stretches, separates, and ducks the hot pink extensions of her frame imagining and opening alternative and simultaneous worlds of vivid color.

REVEAL creates an alternate and simultaneous reality as a form of resistance and hope through contrasts—artifacts, color, and the pealing back of one frame to reveal another.

REVEAL uses key-framing and the use of components of Extending the Body‘s live performance including a similar sound-structure, props such as the long elastic cords, and location.

The work begins blurry—coming into focus with the title before blurring again—placing vision, “the act or power of seeing” on the offensive and aims to place what is being seen into question from the very beginning. Each quick cut jumps to another black and white and/or colored world, reveals another part of the grounding shot—the winding road and ELS of Angela, a black and white road, a pink lake.

The reveal and use of pink throughout—a color not associated with nature, as a road, a river, the elastic cords—evokes ideas of alternate worlds, climate change, and perhaps makes one wonder if they are really seeing what they perceive.
The matrix-y sound—a beautiful futuristic waver—is a manipulated sample from a paintbrush in the VR experience “Tilt Brush”. Foley sounds were also created to bring in the sounds of nature.
The whispers, questioning the world and body represented, “Is your body captive?” come in as Anglea looks over her shoulder establishing a relationship between the voice and the character, Angela.
The layering of footage at different timed intervals evokes alternate dimensions of time—blurring the edges of what is known and unknown.