Concept: To investigate an outside perspective on rehearsals and work with dancers Jackquie Sochacki and Michelle Sipes.

Methodology: In the first rehearsal, Jacquie wore the unconnected headset as if blindfolded to feel the weight of it and allow Michelle to guide her more deeply. The second rehearsal, Jacquie, never having been in VR, came to get familiar with Tilt Brush.

Together with Jacquie and Michelle, we created the following movement score. In my rehearsal with Jacquie, we selected colors and textures of the brushes to add into the score.

Movement and Brush and Color Score:Notes: In this score downstage is Mola’s computer bank

• Beginning 
  • Brush/Color: Wire and Yellow
  • Michelle kneels downstage right – facing stage left
  • Jacquie at center, facing downstage – 4th position on floor
• Jacquie sweeps floor, splatter paints, and repeats movement ‘motif’ until Michelle stops her
  • Motif includes: elbow, elbow, arm, arm, jab, jab
  • Michelle echos Jacquie’s movements building and fading away till she moves to meet Jacquie
• Smoke and milk (upper body) Improvisation
  • Brush/Color Change: Smoke and Yellow
  • Michelle instigates Jacquie’s trailing upper body movements from center to downstage right then on the diagonal to upstage left.
• At downstage left, Michelle lifts Jacquie’s toes off the floor
• Smoke and milk (lower body) Improv
  • Brush/Color Change: Neon Pulse and Blue
  • Michelle brings movement instigation to Jacquie’s lower limbs
  • Jacquie focuses on the extension of her limbs.
  • Jacquie and Michelle are to slowly wilt or melt twice and on the second time bring the movement to the floor.
• Michelle moves away from Jacquie
• Aggressive Improv
  • Jacquie begins to crawl without instigation from Michelle in an unknown direction of the space
  • Michelle tries to stop her and eventually drags her by the ankle
• Michelle lets Jacquie’s ankle go to the floor
• Michelle and Jacquie begin the ‘motif’ from earlier, at times in unison and at times not.
• Lights fade while dancers continue to move

Questions and Moving Forward: We never were able to put the two rehearsals together because of Covid, however, I imagine light flowy costumes and white headsets would allow the performers to be seen more in a dark space. Michelle mentioned, that after seeing a previous iteration, the projections greatly take over the space and make the dance secondary, so having more control over the projections, making them smaller, moving them through the space, etc. would allow us to control the amount of focus goes toward the dancer and/or toward the projections.