On 18th March we had a tech testing day to trial out anything we needed for our contributions, I wanted to use this time to test the dust sheet I had purchased for the projection. We found that the dust sheet was far too heavy for the idea I had for propping it up on a washing line with poles at either end and because the material had so much weight it gradually moved towards the centre.  The film also didn't project onto the material very well, so it was clear from this test that I needed to research better types of material. From speaking to Dance City's Technical Manager we decided that Muslin Fabric would be the best material to use and spoke about different ways to rig the material.

As my contribution developed, I felt that having the projection element no longer made sense to the work and instead I was going to use the material to act as a barrier between the dancers and the audience. Therefore, I chose to rig two pieces of muslin material, which you can see here:

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This was to obstruct the audiences view of the dancers, so we focused on using material that would still show the dancers silhouette. However, I didn't want the material to stay up for the whole piece, but Kabuki's are usually used to drop the material electronically, which the budget did not have space for. Therefore, I worked with the tech team to research and build our own manual Kabuki drop.

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We used Magic Kabuki Drops method:

"The curtain is held up by a pole that has pegs attached to it. The pole is suspended on the flying bars by ropes in such a way that it can freely rotate. When the pole rotates forward curtain slips off the pegs and onto the floor to effect the Kabuki Drop." (Magic Kabuki Drop, No Date)

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Image Credit: Manual Kabuki Drop | Magic Kabuki Drop

We arranged a second testing day to test the manual Kabuki drops worked effectively:

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Bibliography:

Magic Kabuki Drop (no date) Manual Kabuki Drop Systems, Magic Kabuki Drops. Available at: https://magickabukidrop.com/manual-kabuki-drop-systems/ (Accessed: 09 May 2024).