Documenting Dancers

31 Oct 12

One of my film clients this year is Chisenhale Dance Space. They hired me to document their Homemade Bursary winners - it’s a terrific gig. I film & photograph the dancers’ works-in-progress, and create trailers for each.  So far artists include WhatsthebigMistry, Will Dickie, Neil Callahgan, and Alexandrina Hemsley & Jamilla Johnson-Small, plus an extra day filming CDS recommended Changing Spaces Theatre.

If I’m being truthful, a film job can sometimes be a chore (Holiday Inn birthday parties and air freshener market research come to mind). But the Chisenhale work is never dull: collaborating with artists in a v limited time period – a morning or an afternoon – to come up with the viewpoints/show episodes/motion that best represent the intensity/diversity/mood of their work, the stillness of Neil’s show, the darkness of Will’s, Priya Mistry’s playfulness or the energy of Alex & Jamilla’s or Changing Spaces’

It’s a real challenge to represent a live performance well, without ignoring the film format – I find it stimulating, focusing, never dull. Photographs are of Neil Callaghan (from his show A Certain Shaft of Light), Katie Hall (From Priya Mistry's Ping Pong Crash & Other Sounds), and Jamila Johnson-Small (from Alexandrina Hemsley & Jamila's 'O'), and the films are from Changing Spaces Theatre's Museum of Love and Lisa May Thomas' shipwrecked - screen experiments for the live stage.