White Mountain (play video)

The concept for this piece began with the simple idea of exploring the interaction of dance movement and the action of a Prague tram-where the driving characteristics of a tram operator, randomly selected, along with the rail conditions along a certain route, would be as responsible for the choreography as that of the dancer. In practice, however, and over numerous shootings, as the dancer transformed these rocking, accellerating, and braking impulses improvisationally, other interactive realities arose which pushed the piece onto levels of unforseen nuance and meaning. For example, on a technical level, the tram and dance conditions necessitated a camera handheld in the portrait position (rotated 90 degrees) which, like the dancer, was subject to being jogged about. This had the effect of emphasizing the claustrophic and sometimes chaotic conditions of a dance which was taking place with unintended patrons close at hand. These observers, a kind of "found audience" of sorts, further pressorized the performance because of a cultural reticence toward public expression of any sort-a tabeau that was also part of the dancer's emotions. And finally, the dance was made aboard a tram travelling from the Bílá hora (means White Mountain) stop down the mountain to the Melovanka stop and through an area of Prague named after an ancient Catholic cloister called Brevnov. All of these things, beyond the scope of the original concept, coalesced into a piece which continues to stimulate interpretations on many personal and diverse levels.

White Mountain was shot in one take, the last, and is the culmination of, perhaps, a dozen tram performances by the dancer, Petra Vlachynská. The piece was shot and edited by Dan Senn.

Bílá Hora (play video)

This piece, in a sense, documents the making of White Mountain by Petra Vlachynská experimentally. Before Petra's decision to present what is, essentially, an unedited version of the dance, many ideas were considered as to how to work with a surprisingly large quantity of material. Should the accompanying sound only be that of the tram ride itself? Should sounds that are connected to the neighborhood along the tram route be used? Should the piece be videotaped in the landscape mode to include more of the reactions from other tram riders or in the portrait mode and then rotated at the editing stage? Because lighting conditions were impossible to control, the question wheher to produce a piece in color, or in high contrast black and white was addressed. Then there was the not-so-small problem of dancing so very oddly in public by an artist more atuned to formal presentations. The Czechs can be very uptight about such extroverted behavior. Therefore, the process of making White Mountain, was far more complex than a one-take composition, as effective as this rather stark approach may be. For example, at one point, the dancer was recorded walking and sitting atop the hill overlooking the tram route. After permission was received from a friendly monk, the dancer was recorded walking through the Brevnov Klaster with tap shoes in a half dozen different styles. Video takes were edited in one manner and then another, and then another as various dance improvisations were recorded. During a break from what was a surprising vigorous process, while Dan Senn was off teaching a workshop at the Kunstakademie in Münster, Germany, he was showing portions of the video in progress to his students when a violent storm blew in. As the class emptied, Dr. Senn grabbed his Samson H-4 and a pair of OKM binaural microphones and rushed to a nearby court yard to record thunder and distant church bells. He had liked the combination of these sounds and the dance on video he'd heard only minutes earlier. Later that day he recorded the bells ringing at the Dom Platz Cathedral in Münster. All of these elements were drawn upon to produce the Bílá Hora version of this collaboration, one which is more more contrived and less direct, but one that opens the door to additional levels interpretation while documenting a rewarding collaborative process.