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Science-based projects
The Choreography of CRISPR
MIT Museum Commission (2022) using dance and text animations to illuminate and embody CRISPR gene-editing technology
Choreography and Editing by Gabrielle Lamb
Music by James Budinich
Dancers: Pigeonwing Dance (Giovanna Gamna, Robin Cantrell, Kody Jauron, Victoria Sames)
Cinematography: Joe Raffanti
Costumes: Adrienne Perry
Rising Excerpts (2024)
Rising is a live-music and dance collaboration about sea-level rise and the human connection to Earth's oceans.
It includes spoken text by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer (Flotsametrics and the Floating World) and naturalist/free-diver Craig Foster (My Octopus Teacher)
An evening-length work premiering in Fall 2024 at Oregon State University, presented by OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, Atmospheric Sciences. Featuring a commissioned score by composer Robert Sirota played live by the Neave Trio (violin, cello, piano).
More information about Rising here.
Trailer from August 2024 preview at Florida's Riverside Theater -- See full work here.
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Zero Gravity Blooms (2018)
In 2015 Astronaut Scott Kelley spent a year aboard the International Space Station. Longing for Earth and the natural world, he asked NASA’s permission to grow zinnias aboard the spaceship. Alone in the US section with only the fragile flowers for company, he surmounted the challenges of gardening in a zero gravity environment (floating soil, beading water, etc).
Renowned harpist Mary Lattimore wrote a piece dedicated to Kelley, and I used this music to incubate a short work (6 minutes) with Nashville Ballet's second company in 2023. I worked with the idea of tending to fragile living entities in a hostile environment dominated by technology.
Viriditas (2021)
Inspired by time-lapse videos of plant growth, Viriditas depicts the changed pace of life during quarantine. Two dancers live and move on botanical time, aligning themselves with the rhythms of day and night and the changing of the seasons. It is danced by real-life roommates Amy Saunder and Tiffany Mangulabnan; and the idea for the film came from Amy’s return to NYC after the first months of lockdown. Coming home to an apartment full of green, she discovered that Tiffany had become a “plant person” during her absence.
Music: Hildegard von Bingen
Cinematography/Coloring: Joe Raffanti
Costumes: Christine Darch
Orange (2017)
Premiered by BalletCollective at NYU's Skirball Center in October 2017. Orange was performed by five New York City Ballet dancers to a commissioned piano quintet by composer Caleb Burhans, "New York's mohawked Mozart" (Time Out New York). Caleb’s music was performed live by The Knights, an innovative young chamber orchestra praised by the NYTimes as “spirited and vital”.
Ballet Collective’s unique process also asks the choreographer and composer to work jointly from a piece of source art, specially commissioned for the occasion. Our source artist, Trevor Paglen, is the recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant and recently produced a fascinating body of work on machine vision. Read about the process in my interview with Whitewall Magazine.
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