3Fall Dance Company: Sink or Swim
Style. Glamour. Poise. Power.
With KJ Mortimer at the helm as choreographer, 3Fall dance are back with their iconic Spring Tour featuring Sink or Swim. 3Fall Dance are a dance company from Chichester University, showcasing the phenomenal talents of the third-year dance students. A perk (and pressure!) of being a third year is that they also produce smaller Choreographic Projects, they tour, and they learn what it is to take a show out onto the road, professionally, showcasing what Chichester University can do.
One of my favourite things about what I do are the ‘what if’ moments in pre-production; when I talk to the client and learn about the brief and the creative juices start to flow. Sometimes the practical elements will rise to the surface first, but sometimes I get knocked over sideways by some amazing outside-the-box ideas. What I admire and respect about KJ Mortimer is that she is outside-the-box in her creative choreography; she sees the potential of dance as one big ‘what if’ moment, and that’s so inspiring. I couldn’t wait to be back working with 3Fall and seeing what Mortimer had fashioned for this piece (quite literally).
What hooked me straight away was her eye for something so iconic. And everything about it – the striking visuals of the choreography, the attitude of the piece, the parallels and juxtapositions she drew – it really spoke to me.
Sink or Swim blends the worlds of synchronised swimming and high fashion, which might sound bizarre, but hear me out, and go and check out the video! Because… damn, does it work!
For me, this made for a really fun pre-production process, which started even before seeing any of the choreography. I heard ‘synchronised swimming’ and already my brain was whirring as I was considering aerial shots and slow-mo and symmetry and filming underwater (okay, that last one is an exaggeration, but you get my point!). I just love when working with other Creatives makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop!
So, ‘synchronised swimming’ and ‘high fashion’ coming together through dance…
Attitude, Dahling:
The attitudes of both worlds and the movements involved all merged and mirrored beautifully, whether the dancers were in sunglasses or swim goggles! One of the most important things to me, all the way through from pre-production thoughts, was the focus that goes with the piece but also the worlds they were depicting. The discipline, the structure, and the poise – physically, but also in the mindset that goes with it – the preparation, the commitment, the way the dancers found their form. It was clean, it was tight - as both worlds demanded. And I loved seeing the juxtaposition of these unlikely bedfellows, and it excited me that I was the one – with video and editing – that would get to weave the two worlds even more closely together, having them intertwine and play together/play off against each other. KJ Mortimer may have choreographed, but editing a video is like having your own foot pedals in a learner car! (I’m always in awe and humbled by the way I get to shape a piece’s narrative and have an input with the storytelling. A topic well discussed by Abi Mortimer (Lîla Dance) in her conversations on Res Dance Podcast.)
‘Focus on set’
When it came to the shoot day at Chichester University, I was really struck by (and grateful for) the professionalism from such a young group of performers. For some students, it can be their first time working with another professional in such close-quarters (I literally have to get right up in their faces sometimes, which can be hilarious and perhaps a little uncomfortable for the more green amongst the group). But these students were really there to show up and step up. They listened to direction really well, and we were able to get straight to the point in terms of what I was trying to capture and what I needed from them. I’m not someone who rocks up with a camera on a tripod and will film from the sidelines. We want personality, character, sass and energy, and those things are in the details – in eye-contact with the performer/a look straight to camera, in the flick of someone’s hair, the way their clothes moved with the motion and the music; in the quirk of a smile or a movement as subtle as a breath. We need to see the pulse at the heart of the piece. These ended up being some of my favourite moments on this shoot and during this edit. They added all the drama, and also all the heart.
I’m always as transparent as I can be with my intentions for the day, with sharing my creative vision, and with making sure we’re on the same page in terms of whether we’re showcasing as many participants as possible or putting bums on seats for their show or tour. With large companies, and especially within educational departments, there can often be this push and pull of needs and wants, where organisers are keen to be democratic and fair with how their performers are showcased. No one wants to miss out, right? Which is why I always make a point of checking in with such clients to really iron out what the brief is. If we’re prioritising making sales and capturing the show-selling moments, sadly, it can’t always be democratic. More than anything else, that can really come down to my footage – yes – but mainly the choreography. Our focus is pulled with certain passages and will naturally home in on the most visually striking component.
Moments like that, that I knew would be show-selling features, were beautiful power poses in time with the music, striking symmetry or repetitive moves, and things like lifts. These were going to be the money-shots - and often are when it comes to dance.
There was also part of the brief with the piece to create ‘busyness’ – to suggest hustle and bustle (and this isn’t just a request I get with movement and dance based shoots; often this will be at a promotional event to suggest interest/footfall and create hype, or in certain spaces where the room dimensions are a factor to work around). By nature of creating this impression and pushing a little ‘illusion’, the requirement become to shoot down the middle of the group, to show bodies weaving in and out of the frame on either side, letting the audience presume there were more people than we were showing. The logic is simple – to fill a frame, tighten the frame, right? These shots also enabled me to capture all those subtle moments I mentioned before, where a certain facial expression could be seen clearly in the video that might get lost on a stage on tour, or the movement could be appreciated in a broader metaphor within the piece. However, the problem with ‘tightening the frame’ means that you cut your guest list, and you risk missing out on other characterful moments – again - more often than not - it’s a trade-off. (In writing and book-editing circles, they call it ‘killing your babies’, so let’s all be thankful it hasn’t come to that over here in the civilised Videography world!). The best way around this, I’ve found, is for me to invest good time into communicating with the client/choreographer. Where we can, considering the specific limitations of how choreography showcases some performers above others in any given moment, we wanted to capture different modules of the choreography to give as many people as possible a chance in the limelight.
Photography vs. Video:
Now, before this video shoot, I had already done a photoshoot with 3Fall Dance to capture this same piece. And as someone who works with both photography and videography, let me tell you, they’re very different beasts. You use them in different ways and to different ends. What I loved about photographing this particular piece were that the lifts and moments of stillness can come out so much more powerfully than when they're put into quite a busy video – at risk of being lost in a busy video, actually. So, lots of these moments of ‘hands over the eyes’ or moments that feel like a kind of breath are a somewhat different energy when it comes to a photo shoot. And so, when we were going into this video shoot, I knew that there were other moments to prioritise, or where we could use that same ‘breath’ moment but it had to go somewhere – it would need a payoff, or a release. Like in both of those worlds - if you walk the runway and then you turn at the end, there's a power moment. There's a pose and then there's a move. And it’s the same with the synchronised swimming. There’s uniformity and synchronicity and then there’s this burst of energy and that shift from things happening in unison to suddenly happening in canon (that is to say, movements all done at the same time, and then movements done in motion, one after the other, like a ripple effect through the company). The attitude of this piece and of these worlds deserved more than the one flavour that I could capture through photography alone – it deserved to tell its story through the build-up, the movement, and the pay-off.
Magic (don’t say Mike) moments:
We had so much fun on this shoot. There was plenty of laughter and I found it hard not to get the giggles myself when I had these phenomenal sassy performers staring, bald-faced, into the camera – I have to give a shout-out to Aaron, who gave as much sass and drama with his eyes as he did with his dance moves in this piece! You made it very hard for me to keep a straight face! (You can see Aaron working the camera in the video – you’ll know exactly who I mean!).
Another little moment that I enjoyed (and a little bit of magic and trickery), was capturing the lift that you see in the video at the 0:21s mark. Little known fact – this lift as you see it in the footage is actually done in reverse. It worked out smoother (and showed less strain in the bodies of the performers) to capture the seamless descent and just fiddle with the video, since I could control the rate of the ‘fall’. Looking back at it, I don’t think you’d know, and it still made for a beautiful and seemingly effortless lift!
Feedback and response:
I loved working on this video. And what made me love it even more was that the client was thrilled. She showed it to the students and apparently they were buzzing! It's always so heartwarming when I hear back from a student's perspective. This is something I want them to feel proud of – to be able to say I did that! And, you never know, maybe use it as part of a portfolio one day to further their careers.
I've had so many positive reviews about this piece of work. It's made me realise how much I like taking risks and how much I love these iconic, original concepts and shoots - people who think outside-the-box and people who want to create art that stands out. Because it makes it so much more empowering for me to be able to match their creative energy and put my efforts into showcasing it in a way that is also outside-the-box - or is also striking and all about taking risks and breaking into new, uncharted territory.
Like I said before, this shoot for me was all about innovation – focus, discipline, breaking the mould, poise, power and attitude. In the same way that the company and KJ Mortimer really showed that you can use dance in an innovative way, I came away feeling the same for videography and my business. And I look forward to seeing where that energy is going to take me in the future.
