Well...That was interesting. For monday nights class I was definitely surprised when I found out it was so interactive. I never expected to be up there on stage with a bunch of dancers trying to do performance art. It was definitely entertaining. The beginning was fun and light-hearted but it did eventually get to be a little too serious for me. Dance isn't really my medium of expression (even though i surprisingly used to dance as a kid) but even so i felt like some of the activities were taken a bit too seriously. I had fun when we were like goofing around. The main thing that i found so interesting was the way they worked with the projections. It was very cool to be able to interact with yourself and with others projected images. But once again, after a while it felt a bit like over-kill. It was interesting to see who were the film students and who were the dancers and the difference between the two.
As for the performance on Friday I have mixed feelings. First of all, I didnt realize that Bridgeman/Packer was JUST Bridgeman and Packer. I guess because there were so many of us at the monday session i assumed it was a dance company with more of a dance crew. For me, I was torn by the performance. The first half i thought was very interesting and had enough variety that it kept my attention. The opening pieces when they had the number sequences projected onto them was really cool. Also i really liked the multiple projections of themselves when they were weaving in and out from behind the curtain. However some of it seemed to drag a bit long for me to the point where it had lost the appeal of the "trick." That is also definitely how i felt about the second half. The trickery and quick pace of the first act was able to distract me from things like the real lack of dance, but in the second half it was far too slow paced to camouflage it. There was just a lot of shuffling around stage and a lot of repetition. I get what they were trying to do but i wasnt really moved by it. At that point it just kind of felt like cheap tricks.
Overall it was a very interesting experience and i think they had a lot of very good ideas, it just wasnt really executed like i expected it to be.
