Kyla Ernst-Alper
The been thinking... series is a growing collection of dances & digital media that explore how we process life, love, and loss in this age of constant connection, over-documentation, and instant gratification. For some pieces I ask my audience to be a part of the creative process.
subject: no gravity is a short film that serves as the been thinking series prelude.
been thinking... (time wasted), a dance solo, is inspired by the time wasting experiment by Alyson Provax. The soundtrack is made up of audio recordings sent to me from friends and strangers, documenting wasted time, layered over a track composed for me by Austin Mitchell. I put out a call for people to share their wasted time with me on Twitter, my Tumblr, Facebook, and in an email. Examples of what I received include a rough recording of a song about a terrible relationship, “thinking of unreal things and missing the present”, “7 minutes drudging up and reliving old resentments”, and “unspecified time spent on porn”. This piece premiered at The Wix Lounge.
been thinking... (not sleeping), an aerial hammock & dance solo, reflects the sleeplessness that my peers and I frequently experience. We are an overstimulated cohort, always plugged in and connected, constantly multi-tasking, endlessly juggling jobs and relationships. We're prone to insomnia and vivid dreams. This piece premiered at The Muse Brooklyn.
been thinking...
As part of her thesis project, my friend and frequent collaborator Maxx Passion sent me a screendance she had made and asked me to make something in response. She wrote that she was intrigued by the idea of feeling trapped in a place where there was no physical reason to be trapped.
This is the process through which I ended up with this piece:
Almost a year ago I dug up a fragment of an old email for composer Kevin Keller, who had sent me an email requesting inspiration. He then used that text to create a new piece of music, which I then used for this project. The fragment said "…I was hardly sleeping and felt like I was floating & spinning through my life - like there was no gravity holding me down."
Inspired by the music and the email fragment, I went digging through emails I have sent, searching via keywords such as “sleep” and “overwhelmed.”
I initially wanted to make this film outside, but it’s been freezing and snowing in Brooklyn. I decided to start it late one night when I couldn’t sleep, and then figured I’d really capture the mood of the original email fragment if I continued in the morning before having coffee.
subject: no gravity is the prelude of the been thinking... series. been thinking... (wasting time) and (not sleeping) were finally performed together at Dixon Place in the NYC10 dance festival in April 2014.