Recently I started a web collaboration with a dancer in California and a Dancer in New York, where I created materials to post on the web as a collaborative process. During a Skype conference we decided to explore the theme of intimacy. Exploring the concept of intimacy took me down a side path, making me aware of rain as a refuge for being alone or with someone you care about, as noted in the song from The Fantasticks, “Soon It’s Gonna Rain”. This led to my creating several movies about rain, such as this one:
RAIN
The music by Gwan Ying Wu provides a lingering moment of intimacy. Her pianism and arrangements are evocative of an intimate awareness, a personal connection that leads us to a safe place.
As I explored this idea, I suddenly thought of Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the Rain,” a testament to intimate exuberance:
GENE KELLY: “Singing in the Rain” (1952)
The energy of Gene Kelly celebrates love in the rain, declaring that all is right with the world when you are in love. Despite its outward enthusiasm, this moment is a personal connection with the world, an intimate touching with an invisible witness that shares the celebration. The rain invites abandonment and we surrender to spontaneity, to the immediacy of the moment.
Kelly is happy-go-lucky and with an air of naivete, a post war enthusiasm of a century poised for new and wonderful achievements. Even Singin’ in the Rain was a technical marvel that brought movie making to new levels.
Half a century later, the fabulous entertainer Usher treats Kelly’s film as a “score” for his own performance:
USHER: “Singing in the Rain” (2007)
Usher – Singing in the Rain – live @ Movies Rock
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Usher pays careful attention to detail, and he brings a relaxed air to the moment. It is a different energy, comfortable, hip, more into the naturalness of his personality. He is more controlled within the spontaneous, and his expansiveness is embedded in an intimate awareness of style.
Usher’s recreation is not an imitation of Gene Kelly’s work, it is the creation of a new work in the context of a new century and new technology. The set for Usher was not a movie stage, it was a theatre stage. But it is a theatre stage that has the trappings of a television studio. Usher’s set is remarkable in the way it celebrates the original but achieves its own personal identity. The orchestra is re-scored with faithful attention to the original, but with an updated sound.
As a new work, it makes a different statement from the original. Kelly’s work defies the elements and achieves virtuosity through his exuberance and physicality. Usher’s work accepts the elements, and virtuosity is simply an extension of a personality entirely comfortable and at ease with himself. Within Usher’s superb performance there lingers a wistfulness of a past gone by, a recognition of past achievement and a certain regret that we can’t go back to then. But even within that context there is a pensive optimism that all that we have suffered in the past 50 years can open to a new vision of ourselves.
It was likely inevitable that someone would place their work side by side to reveal how well the recreated work matched the original:
KELLY & USHER: Side by Side
Technically, this version uses the original sound source to coordinate the two versions. This pays homage to the original, but also lets us marvel at how faithful Usher remains to the original “score.” We look at 1952 and 2007 side-by-side and observe how the present appropriates and assimilates the past. The problem with this version is that it relegates Usher’s work to that of imitation, while in reality it is a true recreation, a creative act that asserts itself in a new century.
And finally, there emerges a master at editing who transforms the two versions into a work of art:
KELLY & USHER: Together
This version celebrates two eras in a masterful merging of the materials. Each is secure in its own style, and the distinctive qualities of 1952 and 2007 are allowed to mingle in a counterpoint of past and present. Devices of prolongation and extension provide a basis for extraction of materials from each performance and to be merged across time through the technology of film and synthesis. We have a virtual duet between the past and present celebrating an idea that transcends the moment and creates its own world.
The synthesis and integration of the two performances ushers in a new technological basis for collaboration, where through extraction and synthesis new works emerge. We are beginning to see the potential of this creative process, which enables extension of new works through the transformative, collaborative power of digital technology.
Posted by wyzardmuze 
Web Arts Collaborative 