Seeing her this way… she does have a little something of a Salomé in her wouldn’t you agree?

I’m not interested in how people move; I’m interested in what makes them move.
- Pina Bausch

Those hands… they felt like magic.

Do you realize the important role all this material plays in your games? By making explicit there could be a connection between this and Fatale, probably I will tend to find that connection. Would it be we are already playing Fatale?

There is no explicit connection, really. When we are researching we are looking constantly at the best things related to our projects. For inspiration. For guidance. For making also the best we can aspire to make.

Even though we are not putting Pina’s choreography directly into the game, on some level because of the influence of her career (which ended too too soon) somehow… she’s in there.

She, like Salome, was no ordinary dancer.
But we are not making a “dance game.”
The direct link to Pina Bausch is purely emotional.

(I like the idea of interacting with the project (“already playing Fatale”) on a conceptual level before it is actually made. But I don’t want this post to create false expectations. I was just sad, wanting to pay tribute some small way.)

thanks for your words Jorge and dieubussy!

Forgive me If what I said could be taken in a dangerous way. I didn’t mean to suggest you are giving us all this info to put us in a certain condition to, when we get to play the game we live the experience just as you wanted to. It was just a thinking that came to me all of a sudden.

I just thought everything influences us, even the smallest things, and this video maybe influences us towards the aproximation we do, not to games, but to everything. For instance, the how-to-play-The-Path guide you gave us, or even the description of the game you give on its website (i.e. saying things like it is a Slow Game, in capital letters). All that material gives strong influence on the player, or at least on me, as a player, towards the aproximation I do to the game. In a certain way, I am already interacting with and “”playing”" The Path (not really playing it of course, I do it only if you think in these terms).

I don’t really know, maybe the first thing you saw this morning gave you strong inspiration for your next project. Could we count that thing as a developer of Fatale? I think in a certain way it could be called that. I’m being influenced by this (I really enjoyed the video, I didn’t knew of Pina and I began to search things of her) and maybe, and only maybe, my experience with Fatale when I play it, if I get to (I hope so) will be different from the experience I could have had If I didn’t read your blog, and see this message.

And I want to repeat myself, I didn’t mean to say anything dislikeful or uncomfortable to anybody. So if I did, I’m sorry.

That’s a beautiful way of looking at it. No offense was taken. Its just sometimes people look to the posts as concrete “clues” to something…. when it is as you say, it is all the things that end up in the work. Yes somehow all of this is in there.
And we do make these posts, in part, to give context for you to know how we think and what we hope to make. I hope you can find it all again in the interaction and experience. Then it should be interesting to have this conversation again.

thanks!

The German choreographer had been preparing to work together with director Wim Wenders on what was being called the first 3-D dance feature, a project named “Pina.”

Talk about worlds colliding… this would have been incredible.

(so would a really killer artistic dance game. But then again I’m woefully biased. ;) )

Thanks for sharing your impressions of Pina Bausch. It seems like the dance world only gets attention when something really controversial happens, so it’s nice to see the love. Off to teach now…

I’m glad there weren’t any problems, then. I understand what you say, and I think its partially normal things like that happen. I think when telling things in a more imaginative, non-straightforward and subtle way as you do in The Path, It’s maybe hard to the player find out where the line is and when it’s something being told literally and when not.

I really enjoy you try to reach the player and to make him understand what are you trying to say. These efforts shows us you are implicated and compromised with what you do and that you really care on putting the best of you in your work. I really appreciate those things.

If I have to be honest, it was a discussion with Michaël here, in the blog, what inspired me to think in this global and hollistic way, so influence really works! And let’s welcome it if it helps people like me to progress in their thinking.

ah Fahnette. I heard about that… would have been SO great! wonder what it would have been…. sigh.

I think dance is underutilized in video games. Dance has been, in general, an underappreciated art form. People learn the popular dances but not so much _how_ expressive movement vocabularies can be powerful comunication.

maybe this is why there are fewer words and more body language in our games.

plus I firmly believe ALL future wars SHOULD be danced!
;)

Auriea–Thank you!! I think you summed up quite perfectly why I teach dance. We get so caught up in words and we forget how to move. You can say so much more with a turn of the head than with a dictionary.

My ideal future war is a massive tap jam. With dancers in penguin costumes. Because penguins rock.

So very excited about Fatale. Pina Bausch was one of my sister’s artistic heroes–she would appreciate what you’ve done in drawing such a lovely parallel between Bausch’s fearlessness in creativity and what you and Michael do with your games and art. And then she would decide to do a 15-minute piece based on Fatale.

Dance is kind of a big deal here in Belgium. Next to theater, it is probably the most lively cultural scene. Some of the world’s leading choreographers are Belgian (Anne-Teresa Dekeersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, Alain Platel, etc). All of them owe a lot to Pina Bausch. Dance is by no means an underappreciated art form here.

Hurm.
Perhaps I shall have to make a pilgrimage.