iLumiDance show mixes dance and tech

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by Stephen Dafoe

Rainbow Dance Theatre’s iLumiDance hits the Morinville Community Cultural Centre stage Mar. 10 at 7:30 p.m. The third in a series of no charge family shows during the centre’s fifth year of performing arts; iLumiDance offers a unique mixture of dance and technology.

Rainbow Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director Valerie Bergman said co-artistic Director Darryl Thomas’ lifelong fascination with computers and electronics led to the show. “As a youth, he bought one of the first programmable calculators and has been hooked on technology ever since,” she said. “iLumiDance brings together his passion for technology and his love of dance.”

The show – which began touring in the spring of 2013 – creates an other-worldly landscape of imagery through the blending of light and motion.
The dance company uses Electro-luminescent light (EL) wire, fiber-optic fabric, proprietary technology, and a computer system to illuminate the show’s costumes, sets, puppets, and props to create a dance of light to accompany the dancers and iLumiDance’s musical score.

“The combining of dance with cutting-edge technology allows Rainbow Dance Theatre to create a world of magic and mystery onstage,” Bergman said. “Audience members are taken on a “suggestive” journey with the characters onstage. And the blink-of-an-eye changes made possible by the computer directed light-wire costumes and set add to the magic as the stories unfold.”

iLumiDance illustrates the procession of life from the big bang, through the evolution of single-celled, and on to complex organisms, both literal and mystical in nature.

The travelling company of seven dancers and crew of two, who also do some dancing, promise a world of wonder where humans morph into animals, flowers grow and defy gravity, and where serpents and owls disembody and reassemble.

Tickets for the Mar. 10 show are free; however, tickets are required. They are available in advance at the Morinville Community Cultural Centre Box Office. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door. The show is sponsored by The Morinville News.

iLumiDance 3-Min Promo – Nov 2014 from Darryl Thomas on Vimeo.

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