The virtue of dance is that it insists on gathering, on being together in a room. Before the pandemic set in, I was making a group dance for Performance Mix Festival 34. In an attempt to continue these plans, I began to hold Zoom rehearsals with myself, doubling my body and utilizing the lag of my internet to create duet video works. They became experiments in responding to the visual of my own body and collaborating with outdoor sites. While I’ve always been interested in unison dancing, the videos revealed a new way to explore the impossibility of perfect synchronicity. What has emerged is LAG, a video series.

Though this began as a solo experiment, LAG also became a container for collaborative making. Together, we created a series of frustrating, glitchy compositions, in an attempt to dance together while apart. Josie Bettman, Amelia Heintzelman, Leah Fournier, and Leah Samuels are also featured in the videos below.

The score for LAG can be found here. Send me experiments, comments, hellos! jcbrandano3[at]gmail[dot]com.

Please consider sharing your own isolation/solo scores here.

SOLO LAG

GROUP LAG

FRIEND LAG

(FILMED AND IMPROVISED AT HOME BY THE DANCERS, EDITED AT HOME BY ME)

LAG Collaborator Bios

Josie Bettman (Queens, NY) is an artist engaging text, video, and live performance in order to question the dancing body as a mechanism for producing visibility. Their recent work proposes a dysphoric aesthetic via repetition, layering time in folds and loops, seeking the edge along which linguistic structures and physical forms begin to decay towards rupture. Technologies, broadly defined to include spaces, material substances, cameras, and screens, all play roles in her collaborative practice. Josie recently received an MFA in Experimental Choreography at UC Riverside, with the support of the Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship, the MFA Graduate Fellowship, and a fellowship from the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts.

Leah Fournier is an improvisor, dancer, and dance-maker born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. She has collaborated with and performed in works by artists including Angie Hauser, Chris Aiken, Stephan Koplowitz, and Shaina Cantino, and is currently in process with Barbie Diewald. As part of a long term collaboration, Leah and Amelia Koper Heintzelman make work together under the name Middle Space Dance. Their work has been supported by residencies in the US and abroad and presented in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Indiana, and Massachusetts. Leah graduated from Indiana University in 2015 and currently resides in the Pioneer Valley where she is Assistant Director at The School For Contemporary Dance & Thought (Northampton, MA) and Office Administrator and teacher at Pioneer Valley Ballet (Easthampton, MA). www.middlespacedance.com

Amelia Heintzelman, originally from the Midwest, is a dance performer and maker based in Ridgewood, Queens. Her work has been presented at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), Lubov Gallery (NYC), Center for Performance Research (Brooklyn), and other spaces throughout the US and France. She has performed with Alexis Zaccarello (NYC), Pheobe Berglund (NYC), Juli Brandano (NYC), Christine Bonansea Company (NYC/Berlin), and other artists based in NYC and beyond. She makes dances with her long time collaborator and friend Leah Fournier under their imaginary company name, Middle Space Dance, and is currently a Performance Project Fellow at University Settlement.

Leah Samuels is a mover and maker from New Orleans, LA. She has recently performed in dances by Juli Brandano, JACKS | Kelsey Kramer and Lexie Thrash, and Debbie Mausner. Her collaborative work with Cauveri Suresh has been shown at Columbia University, HATCH Presenting Series, and Fertile Grounds, and she has presented solo work at Current Showcase. She also tutors high school students and works at a small publishing company, Eakins Press Foundation.