Funding from Arts Queensland assisted artist Dimity Mapstone and choreographer Claire Marshall on the development of their collaboration for wannaboogie.com

THE MOVEMENT:

Drawing from both mainstream and high art/contemporary dance is a trait of Claire's choreography. Elements of popular culture that wannaboogie draws upon is 1980's street trends of electric boogie; specifically The Robot, and Pop Locking.

The dominant feature of the movement is the sharp, staccato movements that are not typically used in contemporary/modern dance genres (such as traditional Graham or Limon techniques etc). However, the work is not devoid of fluidity. Another major feature of the movement is the smooth, connecting movements. Essentially, wannaboogie applies both fluid and sharp moves, composed using Contemporary/Modern dance techniques in the actual construction of movement phrases.

WHAT WE AIM TO ACHIEVE WITH WANNABOOGIE:

Claire and Dimity embraced the notion of creating work with the function to entertain, and to have interactivity (Boogie Machine 0.3.0), as well as keep a strong focus on making our work stand alone as a piece of art. In particular, wannaboogie is intended to reach audiences who would not usually attend performances by contemporary companies (This may be due to financial constraints, lack of interest, lack of knowlege/education about contemporary dance or difficulty in acessing dance if they live in a rural area).

Furthermore, wannaboogie was created with the intention to appeal to a youth audience, who may have little interest in "arty" contemporary dance. Wannaboogie's movement, with elements of both popular culture genres and contemporary dance genres indeed make it more appealing to a wider youth audience - who may have only been exposed to dance featured in the latest music videos. In creating the interactive component (Boogie Machine 0.3.0), wannaboogie.com allows the viewer to create their own movement segments from a selection of Claire's choreographed poses. It is a hands on demonstration of how a choreographer creates a piece of dance, by joining together individual moves.

Having wannaboogie easily accessible on the net is ideal for targeting wider audiences. As the creators of wannaboogie, Dimity and Claire believe their work and concept of interactive performance on the net is highly original and innovative, hence their exploration of this medium.