Screendance@VisualcontainerTV
Curated by Davide De Lillis
From the 26th of January to the 2nd of March 2023
Still frame: “Monumental gestures” by Douglas Rosenberg
Artists: Fenia Kotsopoulou – Shon Kim – Marta Renzi – Stella Dimitrakopoulou – Dorothy Allen-Pickard – PEC/Bernardo Orellana – Maria Sideri/RUNONART and Efi Spyrou – Confluenze/Anja Dimitrijević – Douglas Rosenberg.
VisualcontainerTV is delighted to present the online streaming of Screendance@VisualcontainerTV. An independent curatorial project that moves through the vast and ever-evolving landscape of Screendance. A genre that is hybrid by nature and in which differences in approach are numerous.
Program
This dance has no end – Fenia Kotsopoulou
Bookanima – Shon Kim
Skybridge – Marta Renzi
Brearth – Stella Dimitrakopoulou
Material bodies – Dorothy Allen-Pickard
Taxias – PEC / Bernardo Orellana
Rhizhotomikon – Maria Sideri, Identity in Between – RUNONART/Efi Spyrou
Intertidal.Barene – Confluenze / Anja Dimitrijević
Monumental gestures – Douglas Rosenberg
Fenia Kotsopoulou – This dance has no end, 10:59, 2018
A tribute to artist Diane Torr. A year to the day, I dance in a black room: a single shot fusing male and female as an ode to life and death.
Shon Kim – BOOKANIMA: Korean Dance, 1:01, 2018
Bookanima, a compound word of ‘Book’ and ‘Anima’, is an Experimental Animation to give new cinematic life to books. It aims to create ‘Book Cinema’ in the third scope between book and cinema by Chronophotography Animation, paying homage to Edward Muybridge and Entienne Jules-Marey.Subject: BOOKANIMA experiments Chronophotography Animation about Korean Dance ‘Sanjo(散調)’.
Marta Renzi – Skybridge, 9:33, 2020
A crowd of dancers rise out of the subway, their colorful costumes merging with city traffic, reluctant passersby, and their own reflections in dark glass, until all glow with a communal spirit. Integrating cellphone footage from embedded dancer Sarah Isoke Days, Skybridge was created at Hunter College in New York City with students from
its dance program.
Stella Dimitrakopoulou – BREARTH, 14:31, 2021
BREARTH is a journey inwards to our own nature: breath and matter. The body, the earth, the water and the air are the main elements of this dance ritual that takes place inside an enclosed limited space. The video was created under the 2021 lockdown period due to coronavirus restrictions. The confrontation with mortality, the experience of an expansion of time, as well as the redefinition of our relationship to the self are some of the themes that occurred in this journey.
Dorothy Allen-Pickard – Material Bodies, 4:24
Through interweaving dance and dialogue Material Bodies looks at the relationship between amputees and their limbs, exploring how a prosthetic limb can be more like a piece of jewellery, an unpredictable friend, a dance companion, or a part of you. The short dance documentary brings to life people’s experiences of living with disability by focusing on four amputees’ sensory response to the world, with a focus on how architecture and design can affect your physical and emotional life.
Bernardo Orellana-PEC – Taxias, 10:31
A work that sheds light on the body and on life as a journey of sensations.
Maria Sideri, RUNONART / Efi Spyrou – Rhizotomikon, Identity in Between – 6:48, 2021
‘…The experimentation and exploration of the relationship between man and nature are the key elements in Maria Sideris’ performance Rhizhotomikon, in which she personifies the plant mandrake, referring to its multifaceted identity. “I am broadening the debate around identity and gender, for something that is not two, but multiple. By resembling the mandrake with my own body, I am interested in understanding the Other. How much space do you actually leave open for something you do not know, in order to understand it, to manage it, to respect it, and finally to coexist with it?” she mentions, broadening […] the wide field of discourse, of revisions and new narratives about the polyphonic conceptual depth of the term “identity”. Words by Charis Kanellopoulou, Art historian.
Confluenze / Anja Dimitrijević – Intertidal.Barene, 14:50, 2021
The Venice lagoon is a dynamic ecosystem that experiences a daily struggle for survival.
The entire territory is connected and protected by intertidal zones whose sandbanks mark the centennial morphological change. The salt marshes are small islands subject to their own indigenous identity that live a reality in continuous adaptation. Governed by their natural laws, these islands are also protected and neutral places; detached from the world, they appear to us as cells or, paradoxically, as static rafts.
Douglas Rosenberg – Monumental Gesture, 8:00, 2022
For this project, I was thinking about the idea of “heroes”, about care-givers and teachers and those who have supported the community in which this work will be displayed. Who gets to be on public view, whose image do we think of when we think about who values, whose life matters? In each performer, we find a corporeal landscape where the smallest gestures become monumental, thus we could say that such gestures become elevated and begin to “speak” in ways not necessarily noticed in our everyday life. We begin to see the intimacy in that which is ordinary or quotidian. We see the humanity of the individual in epic scale, speaking back to other monuments that often diminish those in whose communities they are located.
Thanks to the artists participating in this project and to Elisa Frasson for the help with the curatorial process.
Davide De Lillis studied theatre and contemporary dance in Italy and holds an MA in Choreographing Live Art from the University of Lincoln (UK).
davidedelillis.wordpress.com