Practice-Based Research in Screendance

Longitudinal inquiry across motion capture, animation, and mixed-reality film

Danse Macabre (2016) and paramenoume (we remain) (2025)

Danse Macabre (2016)

Co-Director, Choreographer, Motion Capture Performance

Danse Macabre is a 3D animated motion capture dance film. Inspired by the music, a 1940s recording of Franz Liszt's Totentanz, courtesy of the National Library of France, this film explores hubris and irony through the escapist dream of the protagonist. Nodding stylistically to the late-medieval genre of Danse Macabre, the protagonist learns they cannot escape their boney mortal body for long and no matter how far their flight of fancy takes them, they've always been running directly into the hand of death. Although the film itself is a virtual world, it owes it generation to the ephemeral physical labor of the corporeal; the character motion and camera motion are choreographed and performed by a dancing body. This film was made in partnership with The International Video Dance Festival of Burgundy. 

Danse Macabre premiered May 2016 at the Festival International de Video Danse de Bourgogne in Le Cruesot, France, it has been screened at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, Bucharest International Dance Film Festival in Bucharest, Romania, Salamanca Moves Festival in Tazmania, Australia, TanzKino Screendance Series, the State Theater of Freiburg, Germany, Artistic Movement Platform, Sfantu Gheorghe, Romania, Filmul de Piatra Festival, Piatra Neamt, Romania, DigiEye Showcase, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, Festival Internacional de Cine de Pehuajo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Festival Buenos Aires Danze Contemporanea, Buenos Aires, Argentina , SCREAMDANCE Film Festival in Brooklyn, NY, Columbus Moving Image Art Review, and Independents' Day Festival in Columbus, OH. 

paramenoume (we remain) (2025)

Director of Photography

Premiere screening December 12, 2025 - screenings forthcoming, in festival circulation

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paramenoume (we remain) is a mixed reality dance film that offers a queer counter-narrative to the mythology of the sirens. The work reclaims and retells from the misunderstood (and oft-mistranslated) creatures point of view, suggesting the sirens honeyed words, sharp talons, and sharper tongues are not in service of gratuitous violence but in defense of a queer matriarchal utopia. By decentering the invader from the classic tale, the film uses movement, text, and creative visualizations to redefine their relationship to the outsider, each other, and themselves. It is a reclamation, an inside peak, and an allegory for the fight, safety, prosperity of queer/trans/femme communities. In the words of scholar Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, "The monster dwells at the gates of difference [...] the monster polices the borders of the possible" and the creatures of paramenoume attempt to bathe luxuriously and fiercely in that liminal space.




Research Framing

This body of work examines screendance as a site of practice-based research, investigating how digital mediation reshapes choreographic authorship, embodiment, and viewer perception across evolving technological contexts. The research spans two projects—Danse Macabre (2016) and paramenoume (we remain) (2025)—that together articulate a longitudinal inquiry into how movement is translated, transformed, and re-authored through screen-based and mixed-reality systems.

Danse Macabre is a 3D animated motion-capture screendance created through an international collaboration and commissioned by the International Screendance Film Festival of Burgundy. The project explores themes of mortality, inevitability, and escape by translating embodied movement into animated form. As lead artist and director, I investigated how motion capture disrupts traditional choreographic authorship, producing a hybrid body that exists between human performance and digital abstraction. The work foregrounds questions of temporality and mediation, asking how animation alters the expressive capacity and perceptual framing of danced movement. The project circulated internationally through film festivals, curated educational programs, and broadcast platforms, positioning it within peer-reviewed screendance contexts.

paramenoume (we remain) extends this inquiry into contemporary mixed-reality screendance practices. Created in collaboration with choreographer Lexi Stilianos and Stilgo Dance + Tech Company, the work offers a queer counter-narrative to the mythology of the sirens, situating the dancing body within layered digital environments. Serving as Director of Photography and a major creative collaborator, I focused on how cinematography, spatial composition, and digital layering shape choreographic meaning within mixed-reality contexts. While my role differed from Danse Macabre, the project continues the same research questions through collaborative authorship, emphasizing how contemporary screendance emerges through distributed creative labor.

Together, these works frame screendance as a research methodology rather than a genre, demonstrating how evolving media tools—from motion capture and animation to mixed reality cinematography—enable sustained inquiry into embodiment, authorship, and the politics of representation. This research contributes to dance and media education by modeling screendance as a rigorous site of artistic investigation, collaborative practice, and technological experimentation.

Methods

This screendance research employs a practice-based methodology that integrates choreographic inquiry with digital media systems, treating cinematic and computational tools as active agents in the production of movement knowledge.

  • Motion Capture–Based Choreographic Translation
    In Danse Macabre, embodied movement was captured and translated into animated form, allowing choreographic material to be re-authored through digital abstraction. This process was used to investigate how motion capture alters temporality, authorship, and expressive capacity in screendance.

  • Animation and Digital Embodiment
    Animated bodies were constructed from motion-capture data to explore the tension between human presence and digital mediation, foregrounding questions of absence, transformation, and non-human embodiment.

  • Cinematography as Choreographic Method
    In paramenoume (we remain), camera placement, movement, framing, and duration functioned as choreographic tools. Cinematographic decisions were treated as compositional acts that shape spatial relationships, rhythm, and narrative meaning within mixed-reality screendance.

  • Mixed-Reality Spatial Composition
    Layered digital environments were used to situate movement within hybrid physical–virtual spaces, examining how mixed-reality contexts expand choreographic possibility and queer narrative construction.

  • Collaborative Authorship Models
    Both projects employ collaborative research structures, engaging choreographers, composers, technologists, and media artists. This distributed authorship model functions as a methodological inquiry into how screendance knowledge is collectively produced.

  • Iterative Practice and Peer Circulation
    Research outcomes were refined through iterative creation and dissemination via international festivals, curated programs, and educational screenings, using peer review and audience reception as part of the research feedback loop.

Creative Production Team Danse Macabre 4:42 trt

Co-Directors
Jessica Cavender
Tom Heban

Motion Capture Advisor
Vita Berezina-Blackburn

Motion Capture Technician
Lakshika Udakandage

Additional Modeling
Jeremy Baker
John Luna

Creative Production Team paramenoume (we remain) 16:44 trt

Director & Editor
Lexi Clark-Stilianos

Director of Photography
Jessica Cavender

Motion Capture, Virtual Sets, Characters
Vita Berezina-Blackburn

Performers
Colleen Creghan, Morgan Grube, Alisha Jihn, Elyse Kassa, Francis Miller, Hayden Summers

Assistant Producer
Maddie Leitner

Scriptwriter
Francis Miller

Second Camera
Ashton Wise

Lighting Design
Michael Hesmond

Composer
Seth Alexander

Costume Design
Lindsey Simon