Send to a friend Popup Player Buy this now on Amazon

Scene from: Evidentia

Composer: Arvo Pärt, Thom Willems, J.S.Bach, Kevin Volans
Conductor:

Sylvie Guillem's award-winning dance programme of five modern works, called Evidentia, was specially created for television and first shown on BBC 2 in December 1995 over three nights. Guillem's own voice-over explains her ideas about dance and movement ("movement is life"), by linking several short works together. She commissioned the works herself, and dances in two of them. She takes the role of ballerina, and the modern dance form, further than ever before.
Viewers expecting the usual image of a ballerina, instead see Guillem in a variety of outfits: a black tutu with bare legs and cascading dark hair; a tight fitting formal jacket and boots; a mini dress and trainers. Her amazing body stretches the boundaries of movement to its limit, with powerful effect.
These choreographies are organised around three themes: dance, movement and moving pictures. Part of her purpose is to show how dance relates to other kinds of movement, including animals, the elements, and even the choreography of the camera. For example, in the piece 'Movement', the actions of a dancer and an actress are interspersed with archive film clips.
Choreographer Jonathan Burrows created the solo dance Blue Yellow, set to String Quartet No. 4 by Kevin Volans. In this minimalist work, Guillem dances in trainers, and is filmed through a half-closed door by film-maker Adam Roberts, thus limiting the visual range of the audience, for effect.
Smoke is an extended duet for Guillem and Niklas Ek created by his brother, the Swedish choreographer Mats Ek to a score by Arvo Pärt. The intense and passionate dance explores several different relationships between a man and a woman, which eventually reach reconciliation. TV Directors are Mats Ek and Gunilla Wallin.
William Forsythe's work Solo in which the choreographer dances, was filmed by Thomas Lovell Balogh, a young British film-maker. Balogh used different camera angles to show Forsythe's fluid dancing as movement in space.
In Movement, Françoise Ha Van uses the dancer David Kern and the actress Benedicte Loyen in a montage with film clips of many other kinds of movement, including that of a cheetah, a boat, the wind and the water, archive film clips of German expressionist dancer Mary Wigman, Buster Keaton's choreographed comedy, and Mohammed Ali in training. There are also many references to the camerawork of Jean Luc Godard.
Françoise Ha Van is the choreographer and film maker in the final ballet, In The Wind, There is Someone, a duet for David Kern and Brian Reeder to solo violin music by J.S.Bach. This is the most extended use of choreography and camerawork to create movement, as the only focused images are when the body is still.

"Guillem virtually redefines what it is to be a ballerina"

"The force of the performances, the integrity of the choreography and the balance of technology and art combine to create a masterpiece"
THE DANCING TIMES

"It leaps off the screen into your lap"
EVENING STANDARD

Awards:1997 - Prix Italia. 1996 - EMMY, Performing Arts Award. 1996 - Best Choreographic Film Award, IMZ Dance Screen Festival. 1996 - Grand Prix International - Video Danse. 1996 - Thom Willems was awarded the Video-Choreography Music Award by the Société des Auteurs Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD). Nominated in the 'Choreographic Film' category, 1996 IMZ Dance Screen. Nominated for the 1996 SACD Awards.

Cast: Sylvie Guillem, William Forsythe, Niklas Ek, David Kern, Brian Reeder, Benedicte Loyen.

Catalogue: 0630150222

Comments

0

You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login Now

Search videos:



Videos