A collaboration between performance art team Torino:Margolis, choreographer/physician Dana Kotler, and composer/programmer Lee Azzarello, this new media/dance work explores the physiological and sonic difference between volitional and non-volitional movement. Through the use of electromyography (EMG), a method of sensing electrical potentials generated during voluntary action, the performers’ muscular actions are extracted and transformed into sound.  The piece allows the audience to hear the physiology of the performers’ volitional movement, how it differs from manipulated, non-volitional movement, and in this way, illustrates the performers’ free will through the use of sound and silence. 

 

In walking the reflexology path, one senses a variety of pressures on the soles of the feet.   In this piece, i aim to translate that visceral response into full body movement, using the pressures in my feet as points of initiation.  I deliberately created this piece as a structured improvisation—the sensations one feels, the sensitivity and tenderness of particular points, is completely unique each time one walks, or in this case, dances, the reflexology path.   These sensations give rise to distinct movement patterns, which reflect the body's response to the path at that moment.  The interpretation of the piece stretches into a broader journey through life, space, and time, and a reflection on our body's uncanny ability to respond to external influence, re-balance, and re-center in the face of obstacle and complication.

Created, Choreographed, and Edited by:  Dana Kotler

Music by Aaron Kotler

Filmed by Evanthia Roussos

Filmed in the parking garage of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine

July 2008

MOVEMENT:disordered began as a project of then fourth-year medical student Dana Kotler, for the neurology clerkship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  The piece explores a group of neurological diseases and syndromes that affect the ability to produce and control movement.  Though it may seem effortless, normal movement requires a complex system of control, which when disrupted, can produce movements that are too weak, too forceful, uncoordinated, or too poorly controlled to be functional.  Unwanted movements may occur at rest and intentional movement may become impossible.  The piece looks at six disorders in particular:  tremor, dystonia, chorea, hemiballismus, myoclonus, and Parkinsonism.  The qualities of these disorders, repetitive and rhythmic, contorted, irregular, violent and flinging, jerky, unpredictable, rigid and constrained, are the basis for this piece.  The dance was created specifically for film, using editing to further exemplify the disturbance of movement within these disorders.  It is presented in tribute to the courageous people who live with these disorders.