Kind of New Old Way to Dance

Rūta Račaitė

http://rutasplace.tumblr.com/post/121097217235/f-i-n-a-l-project-kind-of-new-old-way-to-dance

My final work is a sound and image manipulation made from old dances and these days remixed music using rhythmical and metrical montage. The main goals of the work was to show that digitalization can improve things and held them to the new level of art. Also to emphasize the image ability to describe sounds and rhythm of the music. The idea of this project arose after seeing some of Norman McLaren videos. He was an animator and film director who is remembered for his experiments with image and sound as he developed a number of groundbreaking techniques for combining and synchronizing animation with music. I was inspired by how he express every single sound through image by using various video effects. Nevertheless, as this is a new kind of art I was inspired by various video of dances and music manipulation in YouTube.

The dances for the video manipulation was chosen thoroughly. For fulfilling the idea they should have been both slow and fast. So I chosen two dances of Fred Astraine and Ginger Rodgers from the time of 40’s. The music should have a strong rhythm so I have chosen the remix of the song Duffy – well well well.

When deciding on techniques, the main inspiration for the final work become Sergei Eisenstein, who was a Soviet Russian film director and also is called the father of montage. He suggested some guidelines for video montage: 1) You must have in your memory a mental record of all the unedited film; 2) Listen again and again to the recorded music, until the moment arises when you can imagine a series of images which could correspond with the music.

For my work I was basically using two main montage technics: rhythmical montage and metrical. Rhythmical montage was based totally on the length of the shot – you should cut the video always at the same periods of time. As Eisenstein says using this structure while cutting the videos always has some psychological effect to the viewer. In my case, I was listening to the beat of music and by this deciding what should be the length of the shot taken from video.

Other technic – rhythmical – meant that that video should be cut and edited based on continuity. It means that movement in the shot dictates the tempo of editing. For my project I was watching the dances’ video again and again and then adjusting it to the music so that it correspond with the music and look like realistic dance for the music.

The tool for the project was Adobe Premiere. For making the video as planned I learned some various technics how to cut videos, make it faster or slower, slow down the music and other technical things used for creating video montage. And for further inspiration I watched Eisenstein “Battleship Potemkin”, which in some parts was a great example of montage.


Rūta Račaitė (Lithuania), studying Communication Science in both Faculdade de Belas Artes and Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. In Lithuania studies Creative Industries in Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. Also working with E-pub Magazine in Lithuania and going to have a marketing internship in Porto.