Schedule & Tickets <back to Schedule & Tickets
HAMMER MUSEUM COURTYARD PROGRAM 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles
FREE Admission, 310-443-7000 www.hammer.ucla.edu
Saturday, June 10, 8 - 11pm
Beyond Dance Film: Physical Expression
and Visual Media
A dilemma currently facing audiences for dance film is that there is no universally accepted definition of the term “dance film.” Yet, out of this confusion and uncertainty also comes room for interpretation and an opportunity to present work in unique settings that challenge audiences’ expectations and shatter their preconceived notions about what is “dance film.” To this end, the Hammer Museum Courtyard has been transformed into a laboratory for a bold experiment that blends video art, non-narrative images, physical expression, and sound.
In Beyond Dance Film: Physical Expression and Visual Media, an installation that includes the work of both internationally recognized, award-winning artists as well as emerging choreographers and directors, Dance Camera West presents 25 international short dance films that explore the body and movement as a means of expression through all kinds of electronic visual experiments continuously projected on multiple screens and surfaces.
WARNING: This event contains nudity.
Pedestrian
USA 2002/12 min
Directors: Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser
A work of digital art by Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser (with sound design by Terry Pender), Pedestrian projects its imagery directly down onto a city sidewalk or the concrete floor of an art gallery. Conceived as a public sculpture, it merges digital projection with raw pedestrian surfaces. Tiny denizens wander through a trompe l’oeil illusion in a city that seems to float both upon and within that surface, while figures move with an uncanny accuracy, their movements derived from those of real people through a process called "motion capture." While their actions are pedestrian, their over-all patterns evoke a mysterious narrative.
 Somewhere In Between
France 2004/ 70 min
Director: Pierre Coulibeuf Choreographer: Meg Stuart
An experimental film-portrait that transposes the research of choreographer Meg Stuart into fiction, Somewhere in Between recreates the behaviors and gestures of individuals in everyday life -- the strange or unusual attitudes of a couple of unconventional figures; of two girls in their flat; of a couple in a half-destroyed house; of a girl in an underground parking garage, and another who wants to settle in Switzerland and live out more or less traumatic experiences. Suggesting the vagueness of place, identity, and relationships, Coulibeuf and Stuart’s film is a reflection on the body’s posture in the everyday life of individuals, examining how choreographic work feeds on routine social and individual behaviors.
Pierre Coulibeuf
Employing a research approach to contemporary fiction, French filmmaker and visual artist Pierre Coulibeuf’s creates work that stress his cross-disciplinary relationship to multiple film genres and various modes of presenting the image in motion. Coulibeuf’s ‘simulacra-films’ invent a place or a language on the borderline of the other arts, critiquing established forms and questioning representations of reality. Since 1987, he has made short and feature-length films based on the universes of Pierre Klossowski, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramovic, Michel Butor, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Jan Fabre, Meg Stuart. His films have been shown at international film festivals as well as in contemporary art venues. A artist in the International Pavillion, Bienniale of Contemporary Art of Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, Coulibeuf’s works are in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, NBK Berlin, Media Art Sammlung Goetz, Munich, GAM, Torino. In 2007, the Pompidou Center will organize a retrospective of his films.
Meg Stuart
With a BFA in dance from New York University, Meg Stuart worked as a dancer and assistant to the choreographer Randy Warshaw Dance Company. Moving to Europe and after creating her first full-length work for Klapstuck 91, Stuart and her Brussels-based company, Damaged Goods, have gone on to collaborate with a diverse range of artists, including Ann Hamilton, Chris Kondek, Paul Lemp, and Pierre Coulibeuf, and have been commissioned by the ballet company of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project.
The search for new forms of co-operation, presentation contexts and the crossbreeding of theatre, architecture, and visual art have led Stuart and Damaged Goods to create works for the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ghent, and Crash Landing, an improvisation project for dancers, musicians, video and sound artists and designers that has been seen in Leuven, Vienna, Paris, Lisbon and Moscow. With theatre director Stefan Pucher and video artist Jorge Leon, Stuart and Damaged Goods created Highway 101, a continuous self-commemorative and redefining project, focusing on memory, the relationship with the audience and the use of space, which appeared in Brussels, Vienna, Paris, Brussels, and Zurich. Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods was an artist-in-residence at the Kaaitheater in Brussels and the Schauspielhaus Zürich. Along with her choreography, Stuart teaches workshops in composition and improvisation in Lisbon, New York, Brussels and Vienna. In 2000, Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods received the Culture Prize K.U.Leuven.
COLLECTION OF SHORT WORKS I, 60 min
Film
UK 2005/6 min
Director/Choreographer: Shelly Love
In a factory somewhere far, far away the workers test the quality of cling wrap.
Commissioned by Arts Council England & 4Dance TV series/Channel 4
 Montevideoaki
Spain 2005/5 min
Director: Octavio Iturbe Choreographer: Hiroaki Umeda
Employing an astonishing gestural vocabulary, choreographer Hiroaki Umeda explores the nature of ambiguity through a series of movements – both fluid and syncopated – that respond to the repetitive hammer-strokes of the sounds, images and editing.
Filmed in Montevideo, Uruguay by Mexican director Octavio Iturbe, who is best known for his work with Belgium’s Ultima Vez.
 Cartographie 2/Les Arches
Switzerland 2005/8 min
Director/Choreographer: Phillipe Saire
Cartographie 5/Ruecentrale 17-19
Switzerland 2005/8 min
Director: Alain Margot Choreographer: Phillipe Saire
Cartographies are a structured series of choreographic investigations in the urban landscape of the city of Lausanne that search for new ways of printing bodies on landscapes as it creates fresh identities for contemporary urban spaces.
Einselganger
Australia 2005/12 min
Director: Anton Choreographer: Anton & Shannon Anderson
Anton and Anderson’s Einselganger tells the story of a man who finds himself unaffected by iconic urban landscapes, and who dances all over the world wearing the same green jacket.
Dust
UK 1998/8 min
Director: Anthony Atanasio Choreographer: Miriam King
In a Butoh-influenced dance piece that traces the solitary journey of a stranded, long distance swimmer within a waterless world, Atanasio and King present a woman who is searching for the sea of her dreams in a struggle that eventually brings rain, regeneration and hope.
Produced by South East Dance, National Dance Agency
Best Screen Choreography Award 1999 IMZ Dance Screen Festival
Lounge
UK 1995 /5 min
Director/Choreographer: Miranda Pennell
Miranda Pennell creates movement within an environment where everyday rhythms and patterns add up.
Funding by Arts Council of England and South East Dance, National Dance Agency.
Fleissgleichsewicht
Brasil 2002/6 min
Director: Andre Semenza Choreographer: Fernanda Lippi
In an interesting polarization of the cold blue image tone with the slow pulsating sound of a heartbeat, Semenza and Lippi present two very dirty men on the floor of an old South American warehouse. In watching them, the viewer gets the sense that they are right down on the floor with them.
Selected from the Circuito Videodanza Mercosur DVD, a compilation of films from the following South American festivals: Festival Internacional de Video-Danza de Buenos Aires. Festival Dança em Foco. Brazil, and Festival Internacional de Videodanza del Uruguay
North Courtyard
8 – 9 pm Collection of Short Films II
9 – 9:30 pm Interactive dance performance Wear + Tear
9:30 – 10:30 pm Valse Wals
10:30 – 11 pm Collection of Short Films, III
8 - 9 pm
COLLECTION OF SHORT FILMS II, 60 min
Nightmares
Greece 2003/12 min
Director: Konstantinos Fourkiotis Choreographer: Spiros Bertsatos
In their video dance thriller that portrays the dreams of family members as they try to unload the emotional baggage generated by the trauma they have caused each other, Fourkiotis and Bersatos transform their nightmares into good dreams. Inspired by the dances of Ancient Greece, the Atreides, and the tragic figures of Orestes, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and Iphigenia.
Zimmer
Germany 2004/7 min
Director: Helena Jonsdottir
Helena Jonsdottir’s film is a vision on the interface between her own and original conception of physical expression, the cultural condition in the communication age and the degree of its awareness. Seeing the body as a landscape, a fat male “couch potato” is presented as the antithesis to the moving body.
Winner of the SK-Kultur Foundation Cologne German Video Dance Production Award
A.P.A.I.I. / Possible but Highly Unlikely Events
Spain 2004/10 min
Director: Guillermo Morales Choreographer: Ere Queue Ere
Six people thrown together by change, A.P.A.A.I. is an invitation to create a climate suitable for the observation of details; an awakened state between reality and dream where the border can be crossed without control or fear. In one moment, daily experience shatters into a thousand pieces and causes the “strangeness of being alive” to become apparent. Another is fragile and delicate, like the feverish delirium brought on by medicine, while in the third a series of possible, though highly unlikely, events materialize.
Linda Manera
Argentina 2003/11 min
Director/Choreographer: Sophia Maze
A dancing journey through various landscapes in the Argentine countryside.
Selected from the Circuito Videodanza Mercosur DVD, a compilation of films from the following South American festivals: Festival Internacional de Video-Danza de Buenos Aires. Festival Dança em Foco. Brazil, and Festival Internacional de Videodanza del Uruguay
 From Where I’m Standing
UK 2005/5 min
Director: Carl Stevenson
Choreographer: Lindsey Butcher
Stevenson and Butcher examine an average day through tilted spectacles where the forces of gravity conspire to make even the easiest task seem impossible. From where he is standing, she is making life difficult for him, while from her perspective, he couldn’t be more useless. Together they need to get a job done even though they can’t see eye to eye. It’s a divertingly skewed relationship to perspective that re-invents traditional circus skills for dance film.
Sang D’Encore
Switzerland 2005/15 min
Director/Choreographer: Philippe Saire
Sang D’Encore tackles fear as though it were the motive for our acts, achieving a new direction in its straightforward manner of expression. It’s an image of a society in a permanent state of emergency where words flow like blood over the screens and though the bodies of the dancers. Amidst a somber din and a shimmering ethereal light, dancers fall, roll about, and aggressively leap and push each other in a place where tenderness is but a fleeting memory.
9-9:30pm
 Wear + Tear
Interactive Performance
USA 2005/18 min
Director: Eric Koziol Choreographer: Mei Yin Ng
Inspired by the quest for perfection, the degradation of a dancer’s body over time, medical imaging, and robots, Wear + Tear presents the dancer as a newly created robot. A series of repetitive physical tasks akin to a self-diagnostic are augmented by the sounds of mechanistic limbs and joints as body-mounted surveillance cameras permit the audience to adopt the perspective of the robot-dancer’s wrist and knee.
As the robot-dancer malfunctions, another series of tests uses rays of light to mimic an internal diagnostic as video projected directly onto the body reveal its inner workings. Making visible the normally invisible aspect of dance, these interior views of the body are synthesized from animated sources that include machine part, graphic depictions of the Chakras, Japanese anime, time-lapse photography, and “cellular animation.
As the robot-dancer begins to sputter, spin, and fall, the viewer’s perspective shifts to beneath the floor. Nearly exhausted, it drags itself across the floor as an awareness of its own deficiency conjures up a mental image of a body trapped inside a bubble. The restricted movement mirrors the body’s own limitations, revealing that perfection is impossible to achieve and that, from its inception, this bio-machine is destined to break down.
Wear + Tear was co-produced by the LEAP Festival 2005 Liverpool, UK
Eric Koziol
A founding member of the media collective H-Gun Labs, director Eric Koziol has collaborated with musical artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Public Enemy, Sound garden, De La Soul, Diamanda Galas, as well as television personalities Howard Stern, Roseanne Barr, and Michael Moore. His film and video work encompasses both experimental single screen works and multi-screen interactive video environments for theater, music and dance. His films have screened in the Dance on Camera Festival in New York, American Dance Festival, Cinema Museum Moscow, Fillmore Far East in Tokyo, and TTV Festival in Riccione, Italy. His live multi-media works have been showcased at PS 122 in NYC, Ontological Theater NYC, The Leap Festival in Liverpool, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Boston’s Cyberarts Festival.
Mei Yin Ng
Chorographer and dancer Mei Yin Ng has collaborated with Remote Control Productions/ Michelle Laub in Europe, Nyo-Ba & Dancers in Malaysia, AMEYE in New York City, and choreographers such as Sally Gross, Bryan Hayes, Manuel Alum, Karl Hoass/ Damage Control & Maureen Fleming. The founder of the interactive artists collective Mei-Bee Whatever Company, her work has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, La Mama Etc., PS122, Movement Research, The Construction Company, Italy’s Fabbrica Europa, and the International Choreographer’s Platform in Almada Portugal. Her work with Mei-Bee whatever has been funded by the Manhattan Community Arts Fund & a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
9:30 – 10:30 pm
Valse Wals (False Waltz)
Netherlands 2005/ 60 min
Director: Mark de Cloe
Choreographers/Dancers: Ria Marks & Titus Tiel Groenestege
False Waltz is a fast-forward through the love life of a man and a woman. Beginning with their passionate meeting in a seedy seaport bar, and then speeding through years of daily routine that takes place on the conjugal couch, the couple ends up displaced and lost in a teeming metropolis.
Collection of Short Films III, 25 min
Seawall
USA 2004/8 min
Director: Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad Choreographer: Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad
Sections 1 & 3
Sections 1 & 3 of Seawall are part of a video work created on a seawall in Grand Marais in Northern Minnesota on Lake Superior, the world’s largest fresh water lake. Seawall is part of Moving Image: Minnesota, a series of dance video works and site-based performances shot and shown across the state, made possible with the support of Forecast Public Art Works and the Jerome Foundation.
Map
UK 2005/ 10 min
Director/ Choreographer: Alessio Silvestrin
In Map, director/choreographer Alessio Silvestrin presents a body that appears as a shadow moving in an enclosed space framed by bars. Movements that are alternated with images of ancient Japanese maps contained in a limited space serve to document an experience where different paths and locations are searching to coexist in time. Featuring the voice of Noh actor Rejiro Tsumura.
Dance Without Drugs? Why Not Now?
Italy 2005/4 min
Director/ Choreographer: Hans Bamille Vancol
Fueled by art and memories and how work leads to redemption; a journey through past, present and a hopeful future that becomes an exploration of true identity and total freedom.
 L’air Bleu
Germany 2003/4 min
Director/Choreographer: Ann-Katrin Schaffner
As a young woman undresses and dances in front of a mirror, her movements grow wilder, pivoting like a dervish as she catches occasional glimpses of herself in the mirror and making a sound like that of an angel beating its wings. Calming down, she then folds her hand in front of her face, kneels down and slowly disappears from the mirror’s reflective surface.
Herd
USA 2004/15 min
Video by: Maya Ciarrochi (artist in attendance)
In a single channel video/sound installation that focuses on the extraordinary pedestrian energy of New York City, ghostly figures lumber forward with tenacious persistence, their gaze determinedly forward with only an occasional glance towards the camera. A reflection of Ciarrochi’s conviction that the extraordinary can exist in the commonplace and that the chaos of the street can become a intricate dance of chance, Herd was created as décor for Merce Cunningham's Events in 2004.
Untitled
USA 2005/6 min
Video by: Maya Ciarrocchi (artist in attendance)
Created for the performance They are not Falling, PS 122, NYC, February, 2005 choreography by Alejandra Martorell, sound score by Douglas Henderson and Guy Yarden. Based on the work of Israeli artist Mikal Rover, whose photographic subjects are often of very blurred figures in silhouette, Ciarrochi attempts to capture a similar environment for the dancers.
Corpo Liquido
Netherlands 2005/11 min
Director/Choreographer: Piet Rogie
Piet Rogie’s poetic choreography addresses the close connection between the immaterial psyche and the materiality of the body. Inspired by the architectural form of the pavilion, Rogie reconceived it as a grotesque, sprawling nude, its head bent back with chest and torso stretched out and legs folded up. Over this, a series of oppositions develop through filmed portraits of four young dancers and a very pregnant woman, shedding light on gap between life and death, private and public, delusion and reality, bodily passivity as opposed to birth and vitality, the domestic intimacy of the dancers against public confrontations, mechanical actions versus meticulously choreographed dance moves. Just as their thoughts wander off, their faces lose their power of expression as Rogie focuses on the fluid, enigmatic transition between body and spirit.
<back to Schedule & Tickets main page
Hammer Museum June 15 program>
<back to top
|
