Cleveland Public Theatre Explores Online Frontier with Sarah Morrison's Leaping Into the NET!

CLEVELAND, Ohio ­­ The Cleveland Public Theatre will kickoff the 1997­98 season with a daring integration of contemporary dance and new media. Sarah Morrison's Leaping Into the NET! will be broadcast over the Internet in real time using RealVideo© technology.

The world premier of Leaping Into the NET! will be performed live at the Cleveland Public Theatre on Thursday, September 4 through Saturday, September 6 at 8 p.m. and broadcast almost simultaneously over the Internet.

The performance, which will allow the audience to experience the inspiration of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, groove into the easy atmosphere of a night on the town, peek into the world of computer viruses and much more, will be available for viewing at www.MorrisonDance.com.

Leaping Into the NET! will be broadcast utilizing RealVideo© technology, a video stream process developed by Progressive Networks, Inc., that delivers streamed video over the Internet in real time.

A digital video camera will be used to film the performance. The camera will feed into an Osprey 1000® video card installed on a Pentium® computer with a 200 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, 2 GB hard drive, running Windows NT®. Once processed through the video card, the feed will be encoded using the RealVideo© encoder. The encoding process will create a ten­second delay between the actual live event and the video broadcast.

Once encoded, the RealVideo© stream will be routed to the RealVideo© server over a 28.8 modem, where it will be broadcast to Internet viewers. Viewers, who have downloaded the RealVideoc player from the web site's link to www.real.com, may expect to receive the live feed at 2 or more frames per second.

"Inspired by the freedom to explore information in a nonlinear context on the World Wide Web, I created Leaping Into the NET! as a metaphoric vehicle to connect seemingly disparate themes and moods as revealed through modern dance arrangements," said choreographer Sarah Morrison.

Sarah Morrison is a recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where she received the Creative Achievement Award Scholarship for choreography. She has performed with the Lee Harper & Dancers Company in Atlanta, the Repertory Project in Cleveland and the Theater Arts Department at Case Western Reserve University. Morrison has choreographed more than ten works which have been performed in programs throughout the United States and Europe.

Morrison's interest in the Internet comes from her experiences as a student and researcher at Case Western Reserve University where her exposure to computer technology helped her realize the potential for combining technology and the performing arts.