Following a 4-year collaboration with Pentagram’s principal graphic designer, Abbott Miller, producer, Patsy Tarr, and 2wice Arts Foundation, Bokaer worked to choreograph and create “Fifth Wall”, an interactive App that transforms the iPad tablet into a new kind of performance space.

Created in collaboration with Miller, scenographer, Bob Guest, composers, Sō Percussion, filmmaker, Ben Nicholas, and sound designer, Jared Hutchinson, the App takes advantage of the unique spatial and physical parameters of the iPad.

In the App, Bokaer engages with the edges of the iPad screen, and the viewer can interact with the performance by moving the tablet. To create the performance, the team built a box with the same proportions as the iPad. Bokaer was filmed performing 8 of his dances within the box, engaging with the edges, jumping from the corners, and sliding down the sides.

As users interact with the iPad in the finished App, the performance responds to the movement of the user, flipping when the screen is turned, or changing when the surface is swiped.

Technologically innovative, the app makes use of the accelerometer in the iPad, the device that “uprights” the screen to the proper orientation of the viewer.

The title of the App/performance is taken from the concept of the “Fifth Wall”, the idea that performance spaces now extend beyond the “Fourth Wall” of the theater, and are potentially present everywhere in the form of screens. The App positions the tablet as the space for a new kind of performance, literally putting the dance in the hands of the audience, allowing for direct engagement with the piece.

The performance responds to the movement of the user, flipping when the screen is turned, or changing when the surface is swiped. The App is highly interactive, and can be manipulated by the viewer. Images may be scaled up or down, lined up in a series, arranged in a mosaic, or viewed in an infinitely receding perspective. Through it all, Bokaer continues his dance, moving in the viewer’s hands.

Bokaer’s work often involves gravity and degrees of motion, and “Fifth Wall” gives him the opportunity to examine these themes in a new way. Miller and 2wice previously collaborated with Bokaer on “False Start”, a print issue that presented a performance in a flipbook-like succession of images.

2wice has always envisioned itself as an alternative space for dance, one that has the advantage of being a permanent record of a highly ephemeral art form. 2wice has a tradition of commissioning and recording performances for the publication, staging dances to be photographed, sometimes creating new pieces, and recording existing ones. This approach continues with “Fifth Wall.”

Project Team:

Partner-in-charge and designer, Abbott Miller, designers, Kristen Spilman and Andrew Walters, developer, Eddie Opara, partner-in-charge and designer, Frank LaRocca, developers, Hunter Cross and Ken Deegan, Produced by Patsy Tarr/2wice Arts Foundation, Choreographed and Performed by Jonah Bokaer, video direction by Ben Louis Nicholas, Original Score by Sō Percussion, Sound by Jared Hutchinson, and Associate to Jonah Bokaer, Adam H. Weinert.

Download:

“Fifth Wall” is available for download from iTunes. The App was featured in the Sunday Arts & Leisure edition of The New York Times.

Video:

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Bokaer also danced in 2wice and Abbott Miller’s first App, “Merce Cunningham Event” , a tribute to the legendary choreographer.

“Merce Cunningham Event”, 2wice’s first App for the iPad, is a tribute to the legendary choreographer (1919-2009) that combines live-action video, interviews, and historic dance photography originally developed in collaboration with Cunningham. The App is available as a free download through iTunes, building upon Cunningham’s lifelong interest in using technology to present dance in new ways.

Project Team:

Partner-in-charge and designer, Abbott Miller, designers, Kristen Spilman and Andrew Walters, produced by Patsy Tarr / 2wice Arts Foundation, video direction by Ben Louis Nicholas. Original Score from Jonah Bokaer’s Anchises, by composer for Loren Kiyoshi-Dempster, licensed by kind permission. Content in the App was performed by Jonah Bokaer, and Holley Farmer, with still images of the performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company @ CPR – Center for Performance Research.

In 2013, Jonah Bokaer was awarded one of the ten Doris Duke Charitable Foundation “Building Audience Demand for the Performing Arts” grants, in partnership with Georgia Tech.

The Doris Duke / Georgia Tech Residency is designed to build “inventive ways to create and pilot methods for reaching the public and developing their interest in and access to the performing arts.”

Theresa Loong, Eric Mika, Angela Chen, Meryem Kettani

Download:
Soon to be available on iTunes.

Video:
Coming Soon