Norah Zuniga Shaw: Animating Choreography

Artist and researcher Norah Zuniga Shaw pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in interdisciplinary collaboration and research driven by creative goals and ideas. In her talk, she will show an array of animations and information graphics that issue forth from the choreographic thinking of her collaborator, the celebrated choreographer William Forsythe. Working with a team of artists and scientists, Zuniga Shaw’s projects unlock the deep structures in choreography and mine them for lessons pertinent to the complexity of contemporary life.

Part dancer, part scientist, Norah Zuniga Shaw and her collaborators create dynamic new interdisciplinary manifestations of ideas that originate in dance. She is at the forefront of innovation in interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

Click here for the Synchronous Objects project.

Click here for Zuniga Shaw Bio.

TEDxColumbus Live Blog: Norah Zuniga Shaw: October 20, 2009
Norah Zuniga Shaw wants us to understand the concept of “counterpoint”—things that don’t seem to have structure really do under the surface. In her “Synchronous Objects” choreographic visualization project (“If you don’t know what that means, that’s OK. We sort of made it up.”), she and her colleagues worked with William Forsythe to deconstruct once of his dances—One Flat Thing, reproduced—to see what physical thinking might look like displayed visually. His dance incorporates a high degree of difference, with the “dancers constructing a cacophonous structure.”

So how does this relate to everyday life? According to Zuniga Shaw, the concepts learned from her project can help us learn many good ways to work in groups. She highlighted the differences between a marching band and counterpoint. When you look at a marching band, you see unity and uniformity, with each member marching in step with the others. There is diversity in a marching band, but it is under the surface—the different instruments played, the different parts of the same song played by different sections. Counterpoint is the inverse, where the primary visual effect is different. Relationships exists, but at a deep, structural layer.

Through her project, we see how something artistic, like a dance, can demonstrate concretely the fact that there are various ways to move together as people through this world.