GREY LINES PROJECT

Grey Lines was a production from Noëlla Roos and traditional Balinese dancer Dayu Indah where two mediums merged through video. The artists spent two years working on this new concept—the dance couldn’t be performed without the drawings and the drawings couldn’t be created without the dance. The video makes the connection.

The production was presented in Gaya Art Space, Ubud, Bali in 2012.

Synopsis

The artists worked together three days each week to learn and exchange their own forms of art and prepare all the images, drawings and dance. Traditional dances were ‘translated’ into more ‘modern’ dance.

The two artists developed a new dance form based on the wings of the Garuda, the legendary mystical bird. This dance is not ‘sweet’, but rather emotional. The emotion put into modern dance is breathtaking, especially when combined with classical movements.

The Grey Lines project translated these emotions on paper–through drawings–by the classically trained artist Noëlla Roos. The lines of these drawings are the basis for the video.

The video shows abstract lines, depicting the emotions from the dance that were projected directly onto the dancers during the performance and onto the walls of the gallery.

The dancer wore an all-white costume, dancing on an all-white platform. The projection of the abstract lines from the video onto the dancer and her costume interacts with her more traditional movements.

Both artists translated their classical backgrounds into a modern language based on personal, emotional and tradition—melding East and West.