By Sebastian Rueda

Kimberly Cooper’s Suspending Disbelief begins on horseback. Three dancers ride atop carousel horses, these cavaliers thrust their way across the stage as a flurry of stars spins behind them. The energy is relentless and bursting from the seams. Over the course of 45 minutes we are treated to a series of short dance pieces. These pieces originated as short dance films but were then adapted onto the DJD studio and stage. As a result of this, Kimberly Cooper and the rest of her ensemble sought areas where they could push, and where they could present something that would only be possible online.

In one of these pieces we see a green screen revealed and utilized to make it appear as though the dancers are unbound from the ground they stand on. As the collection explores surreal imagery, this sequence highlights the strangeness of living, working, and creating online.

Another segment features the projected image of a bass player commanding the ensemble of dancers with his music. The same performer is projected thrice upon the backdrop, a sort of solo band in which the singular artist becomes their own ensemble.

Kimberly Cooper relates to me the challenge of making the camera invisible. The physical machine may remain invisible but its movement and how it tells the story of what is in front of it can easily take the viewer out of the experience. In a piece named, Suspending Disbelief the act of suspending ones disbelief relies upon their investment and engagement with the work remains a top priority. She tells me that one way to understand how to move the camera is to imagine the dancers and their movement as kinetic sculpture. Understanding that the body is a multidimensional object in space that can be viewed from several different angles, considering the image created as the dancers converge, separate, blend into one another and scatter across the studio floor.

In the shifting landscape of restrictions certain practical choices led to the final creative product. For example, the ability to have a live musical ensemble was restricted, instead a percussion score was created and taught to the dancers and performed during a segment wherein a bizarre creature moves across the stage. The patter of the drumsticks against the stage continue and the dancer’s bodies become abstracted to the movement of their simple instruments. Above them a violinist adds a melody to this dreamlike scene and a dancer is projected much larger than life. Floating above and swimming in the empty space trying to reach for the violin.

The ensemble which has a long history of collaboration have revealed their iterative and shifting process in the creation of Suspending Disbelief. According to Cooper, Art is practice based and must be plastic and elastic. When we experience the work as one part of an extended learning process we are invited to see where the artist is coming from, where they are at this moment, and become excited by where they might go in the future.