Five Studies

2022

  

Five short visual studies or sketches of an encounter between a body, a camera, and a line, explore movement: the movement of one body – the body of a dancer moving in space, a skilled and trained body, well versed in the language of dance; the movement of the camera with the cameraman behind it in relation to the dancer’s movement; the movement of the line, drawn by hand, frame by frame, in a painstaking animation technique known as Rotoscoping, gradually transforming the accumulation of illustrated frames into flux. The adjoining of these three types of movements makes up the choreography of this film.

The process began with an invitation extended by the choreographer May Zarhy to two other artists who explore movement – animation artist Tal Kantor and visual, sound, and video artist Stephane Leonard – to collaborate in an experimental session. This session provided a liminal, multidisciplinary space in which the piece was formed.

This work takes into account the limited possibility of converting dance – live performance in a space shared by dancer and audience – to a two-dimensional screen. What can the encounter between a live medium and a screened one produce? How is the live, present body transmuted into a represented body? Unlike choreography based on the dancer-choreographer’s creative process, this work is a hybrid creation conceived as a synthesis of dance movement, video, editing, and animation. Rather than one medium being used at the service of another, the different mediums create a common language.

  

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Concept, choreography, editing, performance: May Zarhy

Camera, editing, sound & music: Stephane Leonard

Animation, concept-art: Tal Kantor

Movement creation, performance: Susanne Grau

Chroma keying: Jonatan Schwenk

Lights: Dennis Dieter Kopp

Graphic design: Henryk Spiess

 

Support: 
NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.
 

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With thanks to Thomas Schaupp, Avital Barak, Osi Wald.
 

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Presentations:

2.7.2022-2.10.2022 | The Center for Digital Art Holon Israel

1.8.2022-31.8.2022 | Short Film Festival on Marquee.TV

24-25.12.2022 | CCA Tel Aviv, Israel

10.1.2023 | CCA Tel Aviv, Israel

14-15.10.2023 | Women in Dance International Film Festival, Yokohoma Japan