A YOUNG choreographer from Taunton has fathered an innovative film-dance project to screen at arts festivals across Somerset.

Joe Garbett, 22, a contemporary dancer and former Richard Huish College pupil aiming “to push physical and visual imagination” with his work, has created ‘Project D or Decimal’, funded by Take Art.

Under his creative direction, a cast of 15-21 year-old dancers from Bridgwater College, Richard Huish, the SPACE Company, and Heathfield Community School, recorded a dance in the darkened auditorium of the Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre last week, within a lit-up animation on the floor.

The animation was projected onto a mirror attached to the ceiling, which then reflected it onto the floor, so the dancers could move within the 4.5m x 2m space. The effect is a free-flowing six minute dance-piece.

Crucially, because it is being filmed from above, the dancers perform as it their audience is watching them from above, thinking about the bird’s eye view, rather than out front.

Joe told the County Gazette: “I have always wanted to do animation. I like playing with shapes, and using software and editing, and I just had the idea at the end of the summer. With dance you have these impossible ideas, and I think that’s the best way to think, and see what you can make possible.

Dancer Alara Vural, 17, from Richard Huish College, said: “It’s a really creative way of doing a piece, because you’re creating the space and movement together, but it’s in a sequence that needs to fit within the lines.”

Project Decimal is set to screen at the Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre, and Yeovil Octagon’s Spring Forward Youth Dance Festival, which starts on February 26.

Joe is also in talks with the Edinburgh and Glastonbury festivals to screen the dance project.

For more information about Joe Garbett’s dance projects, visit www.i-m.co/joegarbett/dance/home.html or ‘like’ his page on Facebook.