We are grateful and amazed to see ever more expressiveness and sensitivity between the human dancers, and between humans and dolphins, as well as the increasing complexity and nuance in the exchanges of improvised movement. We hope the teaser above stokes interest in seeing more of what was happening in these extraordinary moments. The contributions of our supporters will make that possible.

This year, we were fortunate to be able to continue the development of our underwater dance work with human dancers Kathleen Fisher and Jillian Rutledge, as well as with the dolphin dancers. Our summer session with the Atlantic Spotted dolphins was memorable for the relationships we continue to forge with two mothers Tipless and HalfPec and their young daughters, Eclipse and Demi (the first two dolphins in the video above). We first met Eclipse and Demi as newborns in 2015, and since then, we have seen them becoming more interested and more capable of diving and interacting with us, as we are also gaining skills to dance with them. Of course, we also love seeing long-time friends like Scratchy. He’s getting older and has less time for us, but nonetheless makes regular appearances to say ‘hello’ (buzzing the camera at night in the video above). Our fall session in the Pacific Ocean was also very satisfying, particularly for the increasing richness and expressivity that we see in the dances amongst humans in the deeper waters there.

This year was particularly memorable for the premiere of “Dolphin Dreams,” produced with generous support from many of our supporters and the New York State Council on the Arts. We were very pleased for the recognition it received, winning Silver at the Our World Underwater competition in February. In October, we visited with our collaborators/advisors Howard and Michele Hall, when “Dolphin Dreams” screened as an official selection of the San Diego Undersea Film Expo. Please stay tuned for additional screenings.

Earlier this year, we enjoyed working with our first intern. In case you missed them, you can still read her “Ask Chloe” posts, where she answered readers’ questions about dolphins on our blog.

Over the summer, we participated in an invigorating retreat on improvisation hosted by Susan Sgorbati, Elena Demyanenko and Susie Ibarra at Bennington College. In the beautiful new Center for Art and Public Action building, we gathered with an intimate group of scientists, scholars and artists.. Participants offered observations and experiences from a wide range of disciplines including not only dance, film and music, but neuroscience, physics, and philosophy. Recognizing how improvisation can be such a profound and powerful antidote to the social and environmental ills of modern civilization renewed our motivation to continue investing in our project and sharing our work as widely as possible. We thank Susan and Elena for the invitation to the conference which is still energizing our thinking and learning.

Our most recent blog post celebrates a sweet and meaningful moment with Anna Halprin, with whom we had the chance to share our work this fall. We were very touched by the response of this venerable dance-maker and teacher, who – at 97! – continues to inspire dancers, choreographers and audiences to discover and rediscover the beauty of their authentic selves, and of the natural world to which we belong.

Facing the future, we are not without trepidations. It was a near miss for our Atlantic Spotted dolphin friends with hurricanes Irma and Maria this year – and it’s likely that destructive hurricanes will become more common as the oceans warm. In the Pacific, we have seen coral reefs dying, and struggling to come back. The priorities and policies of our own government hurtle us ever faster towards environmental crisis that threatens the oceans, and the wellbeing of marine and terrestrial creatures alike. We feel how precious is our time with wild dolphins and this opportunity to increase understanding about who they are. We hope it contributes to the shift in priorities on which their future and ours depends.

We welcome your support of our mission. Your donations will help us produce our next film and reach new audiences with the extraordinary images you see in the highlights from this past year.

The post 2017 Highlights appeared first on Dolphin Dance Project.

Multiple views splash across many screens simultaneously, giving a sense of the disorientation of being underwater. Human and dolphin dancers dive and swirl with such synchrony and harmony, it becomes difficult to tell them apart. In the final portraits of the dolphins’ faces, it is hard not to see as much individuality, emotion and personality as in a human face. As they disappear one by one, the answer to the question “Will you miss me when I’m gone?” is clear.

Fortunately, the dolphins with whom we work are not in danger of extinction, although they are threatened directly and indirectly by human activities. Many other species, including the Hector and Vaquita dolphins, are close to extinction. Their ocean homes are at risk, getting warmer and more acidic, filling up with plastic and other pollutants, becoming depleted of fish and other marine life – this is a threat to all species on the planet, including our own.

The new year traditionally begins with the ball dropping in Times Square. This year, we can imagine charismatic dolphin faces appearing across the bright-as-day billboards. How might that change our resolutions? The more we cherish our deep and timeless connection to the ocean and to the other creatures with whom we share the planet, the more committed we will be to discovering and doing whatever is required to make sure that their faces do not disappear.

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Radiohead’s #RHVignette competition inspired us to work with a beautifully textured score, to reach new viewers, and to experiment in a more graphically creative way with the connections between dancing in the studio and underwater.

The competition offers a chance to be promoted by Radiohead on their website, and perhaps to make a video for a future song.  If you like our submission, please share it with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Below is the alternative, widescreen version:

The film features Kathleen Fisher and Chisa Hidaka, with cinematography by Benjamin Harley. Produced and Directed by Chisa and Ben, it is set to an instrumental version of ‘Daydeaming’, from Radiohead’s new album ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’. The film is dedicated to one of our most generous supporters, who is full of so much love she can embrace both Radiohead and Dolphin Dance Project with room to spare. Special thanks to Jillian Rutledge, Yuki Kusachi, and Kayoko Sawamura for their tremendous contribution to the development of this work.

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This year we explored a point of view that reveals in a new way one fundamental theme of our work.  Viewed from the air, our meetings with the dolphins appear in their true context. In the vastness of the ocean, we are small parts of a vast system on which we all depend.

Help us share this new perspective! With your support, we can continue to use this cutting edge technology and integrate it into our productions.

Looking back to 2015, we are grateful for what we accomplished this year thanks to the generous support of donors and the contributions of time and talent from all our collaborators (dolphin and human).

• “Amongst” – the first short film of our 3D Trilogy “So Close 3D” -screened at several festivals and events including Topanga Film Festival, LA 3D Movie Festival, and at the Dance Films Association.
• The MAP fund invited us to submit a second round application for a 3D immersive installation and would support up to one third of its development costs over the next 2 years.
• We continued giving talks, including a presentation at Lawrence University where we also taught classes on dance improvisation and filmmaking.

Above all we are grateful for the time we had in the ocean, continuing to investigate the possibilities of humans and wild dolphins dancing together underwater. This year’s fall rehearsal was challenging. Warming oceans brought in big waves and murky water. We were saddened to see widespread coral bleaching, the impact of our massive human civilization reaching distant shores. Still, it was wonderful to have all of our current dancers together – from Japan, Canada and Bimini.  The Spinner dolphins danced with us in ways we had never previously imagined or experienced. It was a new level of aesthetic engagement – an exciting challenge for us to keep working!

Our 2016 calendar already has some exciting events:

• An academic presentation at “Form in Question: Ensemble Improvisation Performance” is open to the public at  NYU in January.
• “Amongst” continues to screen at 3D festivals including the 27th annual Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference in San Francisco in February.
• The imminent release of “Dolphin Dreams” will follow as we hear from film festivals around the world.

The new year promises to be very busy: applying for grants, talking to production partners, expanding our collaborators, incorporating new technologies, making films, and deepening our underwater practice.  Most importantly, we will continue to work towards inspiring more audiences with new perspectives as we pursue our ambition to share these extraordinary relationships between dancers and wild dolphins through giant screen productions and more intimate, immersive installations.

Thank you to so many of you who support our work – your generous contributions matter so much, and so do all your efforts to spread the word by sharing videos and telling your friends.

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“Angle of Refraction” was an experiment to see if we could produce a live event that offers an immersive experience, just as we do for our film audiences. Our intent was also to share with the local community the work we do (without dolphins) to train and prepare for our on-camera improvisations with wild dolphins. It was a kind of ‘thank you’ to the humans who are always so welcoming to us, and who are so attentive to making this location a safe place for the dolphins.

An audience of snorkelers watched “Angle of Refraction” from the surface. For 20 minutes, the dancers (Kathleen Fisher, Chisa Hidaka, Yuki Kusachi, Jillian Rutledge and Kayoko Sawamura) repeatedly dove down 30 feet or more, spiraling, arcing and dancing our way up the water column in duets, trios and finally a quintet.

And there was also a dolphin audience that gathered as the performance progressed, repeatedly passing by as if to check out what was going on. Their unexpected appearance was a delightful surprise. I wonder what they thought of the event?

Johanna, who was in the (human) audience for “Angle of Refraction” observes in the video that dancers were ‘blending in with Nature’ and that through them she was able to feel ‘so connected’. That’s exactly what we hope for our audiences.   Instead of showing humans standing uniquely separate (and above) all other creatures, we embrace the possibility of being an integral part of our ecosystem as we dance in the ocean’s depths.  The angle of refraction refers to the shift in perspective that Johanna experienced and that we wish to convey to all of our audiences.

In 2014, we returned our focus to developing our dance on film.

In our recent films, the camera actively participates in the movement, so the audience also feels the sensuous, fluid motion of an underwater dance. In this example there is an attentiveness to the camera work, just like the ‘physical listening’ the dancers use to discover the spirals and arcs we do to compliment those of our dance partners. This is how we use the ‘magic’ of film to bring the experience of dancing in the ocean, of relaxing the separation between what is human and what is ‘natural’, to distant audiences.

Isadora Duncan said, “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.” And the call to be more ‘wild’ or more ‘natural’ has remained a strong thread in the works of modern and contemporary choreographers in America to this day.  We feel privileged to extend this lineage into the ocean, dancing in the deep.

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If you have a pair of good old Red/Cyan 3D glasses, you can watch this video right on your computer (and if you don’t have a pair, we can send one to you).  If you have a 3D TV it will look even better. There are instructions for 3D viewing at the end of this blog post and in the comments under the YouTube video.

Dolphin Dance in 3D: Sample

We make our films to provide an experience where you actually feel what is being exchanged and communicated between the dolphins and the dancers. The 3D effect seems to enhance that feeling substantially by providing the sensation of actually being under the water with them.

We’d love to hear what you think.  Feel free to post a comment below or on our FB page.

If you don’t have 3D glasses, or you just want to compare and contrast, you can watch a high quality 2D version here:

Ultimately, our ambition is to share this experience and its story on giant screens in educational venues like discovery centers, natural history museums – all of these almost exclusively screen 3D films. So we decided to see for ourselves, how it might look … and we built our own custom 3D rig, with two high definition cameras, some optimistic thinking, and a fraction of what we would pay to use a commercial system.

After seeing the results, we are more enthusiastic than ever about seeing this work in giant screen venues. While we build the financial support we will need to do a feature shoot with a commercial system, we are also considering how we can share this 3D experience using our custom rig, perhaps by creating installations using 3D televisions.

We recorded this footage during our rehearsals this summer (see our last blog post). In addition to Hugs and Kisses, we were joined by a mother dolphin – who we refer to as Flower – and her less than one year old baby, Buds. In the close up shot, as Hugs hogs the camera, you can see Buds making a successful loop with Yuki by staying very close to mom.

(To learn more about how dolphin babies learn to dance with humans from their moms, see our previous video – Introducing Jalapeño.)

We want to give a big shout out of thanks to our dancers. We so appreciate their talent and commitment. It is thanks to their extraordinary ability to establish a moving relationship with the dolphins and with each other, that we are able to see a connection between species we might otherwise think impossible. We also want to thank Sophie Ellen for contributing a track from her debut album as our sound track.

We are immensely grateful to our donors who helped to make this experiment possible (and also to the extraordinary high seas skills of Captain Scott).

HOW TO WATCH IN 3D:

You can watch on your computer wearing Red/Cyan glasses, but the quality of the 3D effect and the image will be much better on a proper 3D TV.

To watch on your computer with Red/Cyan glasses (If you don’t have a pair, we can send one to you: donate through our online store):

1) Open the Youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrLsn7vIlrY

2) Go to the pop up menu in the ‘cog wheel’ at the lower right hand corner and choose 3D

3) Under ‘Options’ choose ‘Full Color’ and ‘Red/Cyan’.

4) If your internet connection and computer are reasonably fast, you’ll want to view in 1080HD.

5) Be sure to watch in Full Screen. If the image is too small, you won’t see the 3D effect.

To watch on a 3D Television with the specific glasses it requires:

1) If your TV is connected to the Internet, you can use the YouTube app to watch the video. Open the YouTube app on your TV and type in the identifier: UrLsn7vIlrY.

OR

2) Otherwise, you can connect your computer directly to your TV and play the YouTube video in Full Screen. Choose the 3D option ‘side by side’ rather than Red/Cyan.

3) Use the TV remote to choose to convert 2D ‘side by side’ to 3D.

posted by Ben Harley

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During our second week, we met a couple of delightful young Spotted dolphins whom we named ‘Hugs’ and ‘Kisses’. They had come for a bow ride with adult dolphins – their mothers or perhaps babysitters. But by the time we entered the water, the chaperones were out of our visual range, and although the youngsters were only 4 or 5 years old, it seemed the adult dolphins willingly trusted them to play with us. On that first meeting, we danced until twilight. We finally left the water when it became too dark for us to see. Young dolphins like Hugs and Kisses are at the age when developing alliances – best friendships – is important. So it wasn’t surprising that we saw these two together several days in a row. Eventually, they danced and twirled with us in such close proximity, we felt they were offering us hugs and kisses!

We were very happy to make new dolphin friends and happy also that our human ‘pod’ was able to rise to the challenge with grace underwater and above. We were pleased to see how all our rehearsal training – which we do in placid, tranquil bays – paid off in the chop and strong current of the open ocean. Even amid the challenges, we were able to hold our breath, keep our form, flow with the dance – so we could enjoy our new dolphin friends.

We were a ‘pod’ of human dancers: Jilly, Kathleen, Yuki, Kayoko – along with Ben and me. We’re so grateful to the talented group of dancers who are volunteering their time, and giving so much of their passion, energy and talent to developing the human-dolphin dance with us. Jilly is from Canada, Kathleen from Bimini, and Kayoko and Yuki from Japan. The last time this group worked together was in December, as seen in this video clip. We so appreciate the opportunity to continue our ongoing rehearsal and development process with this international cast.

Rehearsal dance featuring (in order of appearance): Chisa Hidaka, Kathleen Fisher, Kayoko Sawamura, Yuki Kusachi and Jillian Rutledge. Videography by Benjamin Harley.  Music by Loren Kiyoshi Dempster.

Our main work over the last few months has been to complete our next film, “Dolphin Dreams‘”. We captured one last critical clip on the most recent trip, so now we can finish editing and soon hand over the film to David Darling to create the original score. At the same time, we have also been busy keeping up with our outreach and education efforts.

In April, we made a presentation to the Dance MFA program at Smith College. Our presentations at universities, schools and other venues is an important part of the outreach/education component of our work. We really enjoyed our presentation to the advanced dance students such at Smith, and to colleagues such as Chris Aiken, the program director who extended us the invitation, as they gave us the opportunity not only to educate, but to participate in a high level of discourse about the artistic and other implications of making dance with non-human collaborators.

In a concert in NYC in May, Ben and I had the opportunity to experiment with presenting live dance (a duet we performed) with our underwater video footage of dolphins. We are grateful to the NYC Chinese Cultural Council for having given us the opportunity to present our work in this way. And we were pleased by how using live dance allowed us to show the connections between the human dance (contact improvisation) and the movement of dolphins and to demonstrate how the human-dolphin dance develops from there. We were also very pleased to share the evening with talented emerging choreographers Kevin Ho, Ching-I Chang and Nico Li.

Following our recent presentations and our challenging, but fruitful recent trip, we are more inspired than ever to share our stories of our dolphin partners and the dances we are able to create together. Join our mailing list, and you can stay tuned for our next film, and many new clips to come!

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Recently, we submitted a brief documentary profile of our work to the Focus Forward film competition, a Vimeo-sponsored initiative to promote the people and ideas that promise a “quantum leap to human progress through innovation”.

“All of a sudden, you realize there are these persons in the ocean.”  Founder and choreographer Chisa Hidaka describes how amazing it is that wild dolphins are able to collaborate in these improvised dances, conversing with us through movement and showing us their tremendous intellectual capacities, curiosity, and generosity.  She also explains that just by watching, the audience is able to experience a profound moment of intimacy and mutual understanding with another species.  As one student relates, after attending one of our lecture presentations, “our traditional perceptions of the dolphin-human divide are just completely … gone.”

Although the film was not selected as a finalist, and will not be one of the films that is being screened this week at the Sundance Film Festival, we are confident that this work is “making a difference to help sow the seeds for a brighter tomorrow.”

The documentary uses excerpts from our upcoming short film, “Dolphin Dreams”.  To learn more about the project, our past and future films, please visit http://dolphin-dance.org.

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When your friends hear you answering the call of the dolphins (your phone) they will know how important cetaceans and the oceans are to you.

This is an example of a ‘signature whistle’, a whistle sound associated with a bubble stream.  Scientists believe that these whistles express self-identifying information, much like a human name. Mother and baby dolphins often call and find each other using ‘signature whistles’. Wild dolphins have also been observed to make ‘signature whistles’ towards other dolphins when they meet after a separation or for the first time. As you see in the video, in our experience, dolphins will greet our dancers with their whistles at the beginning of a rehearsal, and frequently stream them again before they leave.  Like saying, “Hello” and “Goodbye”. What a special gift!

Combining our own observations with those of scientists, we are exploring the extent to which we can communicate with dolphins through movement and dance. “Dolphin Dreams” is our next film on this theme and will be a big step towards developing our IMAX feature film, which will not only feature the human-dolphin dance, but many scientific and other insights that underscore the importance of this remarkable inter-species co-choreography.

Please help us spread the word about “Dolphin Dreams” and the Dolphin Dance Project by downloading the dolphin ring tone and letting your friends know that you answer the call of dolphins!

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Cooperation between pod members is essential to wild dolphin culture. Wild dolphins help each other fish, raise their young, protect each other and more to survive and to thrive. We humans also depend on communities more than we may often recognize.  In that spirit, the Dolphin Dance Project  is intent on creating a community to support and appreciate this new film.

Please help us spread the word about this project far and wide, not only so that we can raise the funds we need to amaze you with a spectacular experience of the human-dolphin dance, but also so that we can raise interest in a wide audience to see it when the film is released.

Many of you already know about “Dolphin Dreams” which features two human dancers and a very charismatic pod of wild Atlantic Spotted dolphins. In our recent clips and videos you have already seen how gorgeously the dance was captured in super high resolution video by the eminent underwater cinematographer Howard Hall. Some of you also know that we have a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts that is supporting the composition of the original score by Grammy Award winning cellist and composer David Darling. Now we need your help to put music and dance footage together into a unique and beautiful film we can share with you and viewers around the world.

To be successful we need many, manypeople to find out about us, get excited and support the project!

Please ‘join the pod’: support us with a financial contribution if you can, and spread the word about our IndieGoGo campaign ( http://dolphin-dance.org/dolphindreams/ ) through email, Facebook, Twitter … or just old fashioned word-of-mouth.

Thank you so much!

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