With Lisa Nelson

Editorial process

For several years now, Contredanse Editions has been working on a publication project with Lisa Nelson, in order to fill the lack of documentation on the work of this American artist, choreographer, improviser and video maker. Since the early 1970s, her teaching and creations have contributed to the development of contemporary dance, nourishing generations of dancers and choreographers around the world.

Lisa Nelson’s main focus is exploring the role of the senses in both the act of dancing and the act of watching a dance. She has developed a system of instantaneous composition and communication, called Tuning Score, which, through voice calls borrowed from video editing (Pause – Reverse – Repeat – Replace…), allows participants to share their perceptions of dance and their aesthetic taste. The Tuning Score is intended to make explicit, more transparent, the way a dance is created – from the perspective of the dancer, the choreographer and the spectator.

Digital editions

Alongside a project for a paper publication, there was a desire to explore with the artist other forms, other media, capable of producing a dance experience. Attracted by the possibilities of video games and 3D environments, Lisa Nelson and Contredanse, Baptiste Andrien and Florence Corin, developed two artistic proposals capable of translating the choreographic issues into the digital universe.

In parallel to the editorial paper project, two interactive projects, the Tuning Games, have emerged:

– a video application: Touché—Real-time Video Editing Playground. This is an interface allowing real-time editing of video clips.

– a 3d application, based on a physics engine, for one or two players in a 3D Tuning Game network.

These projects have been designed to inform each other. They are intended to address dance and digital artists but also to invite a wider audience to get into dance.

Release dates will be announced on Contredanse website.