Cedar Dance Animations

Cedar Dance Animations Ltd., led by Artistic and Creative Director / Founder / International Choreographer and Dance Animator Janet Randell, is an animation company specialising in the field of 3D animation, digital dance and film. One of the aims of Cedar Dance Animations  is to produce a new artistic platform for digital dance using the medium of dance animation and live dance alongside cutting edge 3D digital motion technology.

The company is currently producing The Tutorial Guide To DanceForms, a digital interactive resource guide for dancers, choreographers, teachers and students of dance. With a foreword by the late Merce Cunningham, The Guide has been devised, written, choreographed and animated by Randell. Her aim is to introduce the choreography software DanceForms in a way that is accessible to the dance and education world.

Most recently, Cedar Dance Animations is producing

short multi-media films in partnership with The Cedar Dance Theatre Company, combining live with animated dance.

Cedar Dance Animations was formed in 1999, when Randell began to explore her choreography through digital and animated dance. Inspired by Merce Cunningham and members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Janet Randell first used DanceForms, a software program for choreographers, then branched further into animation and motion technology.

Cedar Dance Animations is also an experimental artistic platform, which Randell is using to produce independent dance animations. See sample of range in the Animations movie page. The combination of her own diverse choreographic styles with her use of motion technology, elevates Randell’s dance animations to a new level of performance art. She is considered to be one of the leading creative independent dance animators worldwide.

Randell writes:

“I have discovered that I can create a whole new art form using the fusion of digital technology with the language and vocabulary of dance. By using and experimenting with this technology I find that I am able to transcend the range of stage performance without the restriction of conventional rules of dance, for example in the use of weight and space.

Not only can this new form of expression convey the emotional, uplifting and spiritual side of dance, but it can also celebrate the innovative possibilities of probing and extending the boundaries of dance, elevating the finite into the infinite.

There are limitless horizons in the world of digital dance for choreographers of all ages, whether able-bodied or disabled.”

Randell has also widened her sphere to use dance animation and film, both as a creative tool for the performance media and also as a powerful new medium for the education and disabilities sector. She has devoted much time to compiling The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms as Artistic and Creative Director of Cedar Dance Animations.