COLORS 78 – Dance

Interviewing Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta, Principal Guest Artist of the Royal Ballet, London, and Afro-American performance artist Nick Cave.

Treviso, October 2010. Issue 78 of COLORS celebrates dance, an age-old form of communication and expression that has always provided a mirror for society and a magnetic tool for bringing people together.

Maintaining the line taken in recent issues, and increasingly seeking to dissolve the boundaries between the printed page, the web and interactive technologies such as Augmented Reality, COLORS 78 explores dance in its many styles, symbolisms, languages and rituals, starting with the intimate and personal story of Cuban dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta. The youngest of 11 children from a humble Havana family, he is now the Principal Guest Artist of the Royal Ballet in London, and one of the most influential figures in international dance today. Acosta’s story is followed by those of numerous dancers ‘from around the world’ who, thanks to the infinite potential of the Internet as a virtual location for active, global participation, have succeeded in expressing their art and creativity and portraying their dreams and ambitions.

There are those who consider dance to be a form of religious meditation or social denouncement; some use it as an erotic tool; and yet others appreciate its value as an instrument of learning, or to simply keep fit. The prisoners at the Philippine maximum security jail in Cebu fall into the latter category. They became overnight celebrities when the prison director and choreographer Byron Garcia decided to post a video of 1,500 inmates on YouTube, as they roused body and spirit with a rendition of the zombie dance from Michael Jackson's ‘Thriller’. So how does the story end? What lies behind this great success? COLORS found the director. Having resigned from his position, Garcia took his best twenty dancers with him; they are now known as the Ambassadors of Goodwill.

Beckii Cruel is the nickname of a girl from the remote Isle of Man, in the middle of the Irish Sea. She is a big fan of Japanese comics that she buys from her local newsagents, and one day she decided to post a video of herself online, dancing in her bedroom to the theme songs from Japanese cartoons. She soon became a star in Japan, performing live in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans, and even publishing a DVD. COLORS went to visit her on the Isle of Man, to discover the ways and dreams of a normal 14-year-old British girl whose life has been changed by YouTube.

Dance has offered Chinese hip hop enthusiast Wu Ying a new lease on life. This sprightly 72-year-old is the founder of the Hip Hop Grannies, a multiple award-winning group of elderly performers who are reaping all the benefits - both physical and mental – of the famous Afro-American dance style.

What YouTube does not tell us are the stories that lie behind these videos, some of them clicked millions of times, as while information on the web is vast, it fails to scratch beneath the surface. COLORS decided to go beyond the limits set by the computer screen and reveal what goes on behind the scenes.

After a special tribute to Afro-American artist and dancer Nick Cave and his Soundsuits - “clothes in motion” that dance in a riot of color and sound – come the stories proposed through the participatory platform www.colorsmagazine.com, a virtual community in which writers, photographers or readers from anywhere around the world can share their material as and when they choose.

After following so many real life stories of dance, COLORS also offers the Yellow Pages, our traditional little encyclopedia of curious facts and information on the strange and amusing products created for the dance world.

In conjunction with the publication of issue 78 of the magazine on paper, the new COLORS Magazine app for the Apple iPad will be available soon. In addition to the written content, numerous video, musical and photographic contributions produced specifically for the iPad will accompany the user on a journey of discovery into stories selected by the COLORS team for their unique, bizarre or moving qualities. In this way the app becomes a dynamic supplement to the paper version, where anyone can read, watch and listen to the contents that most interest them as often as they like.

COLORS 78 – Dance

At newsagents, bookshops and in the iTunes App Store from October 2010 in three bilingual editions (English + Italian, French or Spanish). Beginning with COLORS issue 78, a Korean edition will also be launched, thanks to an agreement with publishers The Dawn Ltd., of Seoul.

Available for purchase online at the website http://www.staffonline.biz/COLORS/htm/page.php