Daybreak
First Performance: Merce Cunningham Dance Studio, NYC 2000
Choreographer: Anita Cheng
Original Cast: Erika Bloom, Katie Sue Brack, Renée Smith, Stacy Sumpman
Music: Carl Landa
Video: Ronaldo Kiel

Ronaldo Kiel and I are inspired by the movement studies of Eadweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton. Beginning in the early 20th century, these pioneers used photography to analyze motion. Our choreographic idea comes from the play between the enactment of still images and the dance necessary to show successive stills. Our videographic idea comes from the graph background behind Muybridge’s motion studies reconceived as a 2D plane influenced by 3D software effects. —A. Cheng