Besides working on his own stage works and interactive installations (see Freuden | Tanz, I-Care-Us and .txt pages), Stephan has been working as a video designer for other choreographers and theater directors. Originally coming from dance and choreography, his approach can be best described as ‘kinaesthetic video design’ or ‘transmedia choreography’. In other words, Stephan adopts an embodied approach to programming interactive systems and video mapping as an integrative part of the performance. Here are some recent examples:
Histórias de além terra | Stories from beyond earth (2019)
Video Design and content creation for full dome projection (For Leonor Keil)
Based on text of Regina Guimarães, the piece was created and is interpreted by the dancer Leonor Keil. "To have the universe as a stage was a challenge that soon attracted me. When the challenge is fulfilled, the true flight comes and the perspective changes ... The thinking becomes more abstract, almost beyond my reach. It's a lot of space to fill, but it's inevitable to want to dive," says the author. And how, after all, are Stories from beyond earth born? "The original text, authored by Regina [Guimarães], serves as the guiding thread. Me and the team I met looked at the project as a work in progress, a journey of experimentation, discovery and risk. The project involves new and unknown tools, a vast array of tasks yet to be learned. But our desire is to project to a dome and be able to dance upside down, like Fred Astaire or an asteroid adrift, " explains Leonor Keil.
The Divine Comedy - Inferno (2017)
Video Design and Content Creation (For João Brites)
After more than four decades of intense artistic, cultural and pedagogical production, Brites and Teatro O Bando have embarked on a profound humanistic, philosophical and political reflection of contemporary society based on the work of Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy - Inferno is the first instalment of a six year spanning project by Brites and Teatro O Bando in collaboration with Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, based on the original text by Alighieri.
O Que Fazer Daqui Para Trás (2016)
Interactive Subtitles System (For João Fiadeiro)
O Que Fazer Daqui Para Trás (What to do with what remains) is an exhilarating dance piece that could be described as a contemporary novel published onstage in real-time. Five dancers exert themselves running in the outskirts of the theatre. In regular intervals they enter the theater one by one, stop centre stage in front of a microphone stand, and convey their experience while gasping for breath. The performance comes to a close when the first performer breaks down and cannot continue to run or speak any further.
Merci (2016)
Video Projection Mapping (For Sara Vaz)
MERCI is a video-installation show, composed of three films (M # 1, M # 2 and M # 3), recorded with an iPhone. Simultaneously referential and abstract, MERCI starts from specific events and experiences that serve as a trigger for the fictional construction. The context is that of a trip through Europe and a love story between two characters: the author and X. X will always be, also, the spectator himself. Through the construction of a labyrinthine narrative where reality, dreams and fiction are confused, M # 1 corresponds to the experience of the love story, M # 2 is a mourning, M # 3 is a satire, a staging of a sort of directed filmed diary to X. In playing with antitheses such as documentation and invention, fact and fiction, reality and farce, MERCI constructs a territory open to communication, where the spectator is also a 'protagonist'.