I’m very excited and proud to announce that for the next few weeks I’ll be taking part in an Embedded Journalism project with the IJAD dance company!

  (Image courtesy of IJAD Dance Company)

They put out an open call for two friendly bloggers to provide an outside but inside look at the run up to a performance at the Science Museum on October 30^th.

I’ll be having a look into rehearsals, workshops and the performance itself, and then tweeting and blogging about it to show a little bit of behind the scenes but from an external point of view! How cool is that? You can keep up with my adventures on my twitter @makingthemarrow and also on their twitter account @IJADdance.

The first thing for me to take a look at is what exactly I’ve just gotten myself into.

A little research and reading tells me the company has an “intrinsically Arabic essence” and that they find their initial roots in Raqs Sharqi – a classical Egyptian style of belly dance.

I’ve had a poke around their website, and there’s a neat video to watch of previous performances and rehearsals. The majority of the clips feature strong and passionate movements to tell a story. There is lovely usage of loose fabrics to create movement in the dances. The dancers are mainly female (as are all the ‘people’ of the company – I like this place) and there’s an interesting mix of in-studio visuals, and more site-specific dance pieces.

This mix lends well to the company’s aim to “create a complete synthesis of the real, virtual, visual and the physical, a fully immersive experience.” I’m a big fan of immersive theatre pieces, so the mention of immersion and audience interaction being integral to the performances is incredibly exciting to me.

Secrecy seems to be an incredibly strong part of the In-Finite theme. Past performances have consisted of dances based on and inspired by secrets that have been sent into IJAD from followers, facebook friends, et.all. It aimed to ask questions about how social media and social interaction can shape and change the creative process. Watch a video about it here .

The upcoming performance will hopefully continue the theme of secrecy, with scientific elements added in. It is described as:

” Experience space architecture through IJAD Dance Company’s ‘lens of the unseen’. Inspired by the Science Museum’s Middle Eastern astronomy collection, IJAD’s choreography here manifests the unrevealed through dance. A pause between the Middle East and the West, the annals of time and the advances of future, and of science and dance, In-Finite Space is a choreographic two-way mirror located between the Science Museum and the twittersphere. Add your ideas to the constellation of the event.” 

Communication and social interaction also seems as if they are still key to the performance, and I’m very excited to see how twitter and facebook interactions help to shape the outcome of the performance. Based on the above detective work, I’m hoping for secrecy, immersion, and technological integration to play a major role in what I see over the next few weeks. I’m excited; this is the start of something good!

Keep up by following my blog or by looking out for the #InfiniteReach hashtag on social media.

You can learn a bit about what I’m getting myself into on the IJAD dance company website, and make sure you start following them on twitter @IJADdance . You can also check out the blog of Lily Middleton, who is also an Embedded Journalist for the project. She’s on twitter @Brillil22 .