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DANCING ON THE DIGITAL HIGHWAY
Choreographers are being urged to design dances on PCs and explore the creative use of the multimedia.

Dancers are turning digital. Today is the second day of a weekend workshop at the South Bank Centre, London, in which 12 of Britain's top choreographers, including Ashley Page of the Royal Ballet, have begun to explore the potential of digital dancing, a new craze that is sweeping Canada and America.
The workshop, taking place at the Royal Festival Hall as part of this year's Dance Umbrella Festival, has been masterminded by Terry Braun, a film director who produced several parts of The Net, the BBC's recent series on the information superhighway.
The aim of the workshop, says Braun, is to convince dancing experts of the creative potential of computers and multimedia.
"On one level the personal computer can be like a palette for dancers and choreographers to try out new movements away from the theatre," says Braun. "On a deeper level it can be the toolbox for a completely new kind of video and television-based choreography."
Canadian software called LifeForms which has been written for the Apple Mac, can be used by choreographers to design new movements for dancers when they have no access to either dancers or a theatre.
LifeForms - developed in the Computer Graphics Research Laboratory at the Simon Fraser University in Canada - is able to draw the figure of a dancer on a stage and is programmed to refuse any movements that the human body cannot achieve.
Frames of movements can be replayed to give the operator a genuine idea of how a series of movements would look on stage.
"This means choreographers can design pieces when they are at home, or even on the move using a notebook computer," says Braun. "It opens up new possibilities of how and when they can work."
However, Braun is also pushing hard the idea of digital dancing as a new medium for use in video, television and ultimately for multimedia applications on CD-Rom.
"Until now video and television choreography has been limited to re-enactments of how dance is performed on stage," he says. "Ideally, the computer can bring a new palette where, for example, dances can be performed on a leaf of a painting on the ceiling of a renaissance cathedral. That could be so much more of a creative form of art, particularly suited to video and television."
At the workshop, the 12 professional choreographers will be flanked by 12 "digital artists" familiar with the LifeForms computer software as well as other artistic publishing packages such as Director, multimedia and animations authoring software.
Apple UK, the workshop's official sponsor, has donated 12 computers, including the Power Macintosh, its most powerful PC.
Together, the teams aim to compile dances on the computers which can then be performed in real life.
Braun also sees the emergence of digital dancing as a way to integrate modem, more "hip" forms of dance into the traditional world of orthodox ballet.
"Modem Jazz, Acid House and Rap are younger forms of dance that can be brought together using digital art forms. For example, the electronic music world, which uses a language called "midi", could be made compatible with a program such as LifeForms. There is no end to the possibilities," he says.
It would also be possible for teams of digital dancers, choreographers and artists to work on multimedia computer, video, or TV art regardless of where they were in the world.
"The other great virtue of the digital world is that ideas can be worked on simultaneously using a computer or telephone network. Sharing ideas and swapping movements could become commonplace among dance artists in the future," he says.
Braun hopes that this weekend's workshop will be the beginning of a series of similar events, and that the calibre of top dancers attending may persuade the Arts Council to set aside funds to develop the concept of digital dancing.
"Clearly, there is so much we could do," he says, "and I see no reason why we shouldn't receive a subsidy in the same way as more orthodox forms of art."


a.		LifeForms enables artists to create virtual choreographies without the need of a stage or dancers.
b.		With the use of LifeForms choreographers can make up movements the human body cannot produce.
c.		Braun is hoping to convince the Arts Council that this new art form should be subsidized.
d.		Although digital dancing opens up a lot of possibilities in choreography, it can only be used to design new dances.
e.		One of the advantages of digital dancing is that artists will be able to collaborate with one another just by using a computer or a telephone.
f.		It is not yet clear whether it will be possible for the dances designed on the computer to be performed by real dancers.
g.		The fact that very few top choreographers attended the digital dance workshop might spoil Terry Braun's plans.
h.		The choreographers will be working side by side with digital artists who are already familiar with new software.
i.		As LifeForms is compatible with modern electronic music new forms of music could be integrated into the traditional world of orthodox ballet.
j.		Apple UK provided the computers that were used in the workshop.

1.	LifeForms, the new digital dancing programme, was developed
	a) at the South Bank Centre in London. b) at the Computer Graphics Research Laboratory in Canada. c) at Apple Mac in the UK.
2.	Terry Braun is
	a) one of the 12 top choreographers who attended the workshop. b) a film director who was in charge of the workshop at the Royal Festival Hall. c) the digital artist who developed the software for digital dancing.
3.	The 12 choreographers who attended the workshop
	a) had already worked together using computers to design new movements. b) had used the computer to create new movements and choreographies on video and TV. c) were not familiar with the potential there is in the new software programme.

1.	The wire cages stand in rows, each housing a solitary fox which paces its mesh floor in silence. These are Arctic foxes, resplendent in silver-grey fur, but they are far from their native polar wilderness. Their home is a compound, surrounded by rusting sheets of corrugated iron, on a council estate in Bradford.
2.	For seven years John Lalor has kept a fur farm at the bottom of the garden behind his pebble-dashed semi-detached house, to the bewilderment of his neighbours. The animals are dispatched on the spot by injection and their pelts sold as far afield as Leipzig for £20 apiece.
3.	The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has paid six visits but found no evidence to justify a prosecution. Lalor, who was convicted last year of stabbing one of his sons, does as he pleases on the farm: the law does not even require him to seek a licence.
4.	This week a government body will propose new restrictions which, if adopted, could mean the closure of all but a handful. of Britain's remaining fur farms and would almost certainly put back-street enterprises such as Lalor's out of business.
5.	The Farm Animal Welfare Council, which advises the agriculture ministry, is understood to have agreed on Thursday that such farms should be licensed by local authorities. Animals would have to be kept in large enough enclosures with "suitable" lighting, ventilation and drainage. The recommendation, which appears in a confidential report to Angela Browning, the junior agriculture minister, follows a 10-year campaign by the animal welfare lobby. This includes models such as Yasmin Le Bon and fashion designers, from Sir Hardy Amies to Vivienne Westwood, who have campaigned to banish fur from the high street and eliminate the fur industry.
6.	The number of mink farms - which, unlike those rearing foxes, must obtain a licence from the agriculture ministry - has fallen sharply from its peak of more than 70 to 11. No official records exist to indicate how many small-scale fox farms there may be. Official thinking on the farms' methods appears to have hardened just as sales of fur have begun to recover. It is nearly two years since a mink farmer's libel action bankrupted Lynx, the anti-fur campaign.
7.	The group's demise gave fresh heart to fur enthusiasts who had hidden their coats away in response to slogans such as, "It takes 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat but only one to wear it”. A growing number of designers now incorporate fur into their outfits, and in Moscow last week the Queen wore a favourite 47-year-old mink coat.
8.	Nicholas Soames, Browning's predecessor as agriculture minister, called fur farming "a disagreeable business". He invited representatives of the anti-fur group, Respect for Animals, to his office and asked the advisory council to consider its idea of regulating such farms as zoos.
9.	The council is thought to have rejected this but recommended that Arctic foxes and mink be listed under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, which would force their owners to provide accommodation of "suitable" construction and size, permitting "adequate exercise".
10.	Sir Colin Spedding, chairman of the council, refused to confirm its advice to the minister but said: 'We feel that it's inappropriate to farm wild animals in this way in confinement and that it would be very difficult to design suitable accommodation that could possibly be economic."
11.	Respect for Animals said it would welcome any move to put welfare before the farmers' financial interests. The RSPCA, however, predicted that the biggest mink farms would survive.
12.	This weekend. Danny Swarij, who keeps 10,000 mink under licence at Swalesmoor, West Yorkshire, said he would stay in business if it proved economic to make changes.
13.	Lalor, however, acknowledged that the restrictions could shut his farm. "I don't know whether I will be carrying on with this," he said.


a.		who asked an anti-fur group for advice on how to regulate fur-farms.
b.		what may happen if the new restrictions proposed are adopted.
c.		how animals would have to be kept on the farms licensed by the local authorities.
d.		why the number of mink farms has dropped so dramatically.
e.		how animals are killed in Lalor's fur-farm.
f.		why Lynx has stopped campaigning.
g.		what the head of the advisory council thinks about farming wild animals.
h.		what some fashion designers and models have been doing for the last 10 years.
i.		what made some fashion designers change their minds and begin to incorporate fur into their designs.
j.		why the RSCPA has failed to convict John Lalor.


SECTION A Reading Comprehension