In the pre-project Filmpainting – with dance as a motive I approached dance as “movement in time and space”. This is of course simply one of many possible approaches to what can be called “dance”, and to me, one of the driving forces to do this project was a certain urge to explore/question the content of this specific approach.
My main idea was based on a simple “hypothesis” assuming that there are several parallels between the three artistic media dance, abstract painting, and film. For four months I explored these parallels, through improvisations, reading and working-analyses.
If one chooses to define dance as ”movement in time and space”, does this mean that, for example, the movements of a video camera could be thought of and approached as a kind of dance? Could it be possible to make the camera movements be perceived as choreography, and what kind of possibilities does this way of thinking open up for in the filming? If dance is seen as movement in time and space, does this mean that the movements of the painter’s hand can be seen as dance, and the painting/drawing a sort of “fixed” choreography? Would it be possible to somehow create film-material which could be experienced as a kind of painting, using a dancers dance as the ”motive”?
The period ended with a nine-day film-choreographic collaboration together with the German film photographer Zoë Schmederer (December 2012).
After the work with Zoë I came to the understanding that drawing, to me, actually has a clearer similarity with dance than painting. I concluded that I wanted to change the “visual space” in the film radically, by making everything in it be white (including the dancer herself). In this way the space in the film, combined with the rectangular “framing” made by the video camera, allude a drawing-sheet. This creates possibilities for working with lines, light and shadow – aspects that can be thought of as the base for the visual illusion of 3-dimentional space in drawing. So I expanded the collaboration to include the visual artist Trudy Jaeger, who has, in my opinion, a very dance-like way of drawing as her speciality.
Sadly I short after I got in touch with Trudy, I got serious problems with my back and found that it didn´t really make sense to continue the project with the physical limitations this created. Sad ending!
Annika Vestel 