For 15 years, primarily in the city of New York, the part of my practice focused on dance film has led me to create more than 50 pieces and, in so doing, share life with more than 150 different artists. I left Montreal in 2008 to continue my life across the border in search of a new beginning…one that stretched and challenged my perspective and forced me into the discomfort of the unknown. In my collaborations with these artists, I have grown, fought, explored, expanded, relished and healed. I hope with this program, and in the marking of this time, I will open up a new pathway forward into life and art even halfway as rewarding as the one you see a record of here.
EARLY WORK
Spaces And Bones
Melanie Maar, Kenta Nagai April 22, 2008
Central Park, NY 12:51
Digital Video
This collaboration with Melanie and Kenta was my first experiment into filming dance. In a way, I felt that my ideas in relationship to filming music had worn thin, and this piece became a revelatory one in retrospect…the addition of Melanie and her spatial choices, the relationship of my own movement and how it kept Kenta and the world around them both in perspective added a profoundly new dimension to my filmmaking, one that I am still working within to this day.
Western Gypsy Rhymes
Chloe Kernaghan, Katherine Mills, Taraka Larson
September 18, 2012
SoHo, NY, USA
5:40
Digital Film
The first piece filmed for my early dance feature, Baryon, a film commissioned by Pentacle in response to a request to curate a series of dance films to be screened at Spectacle in Williamsburg. Not having digital access to most of the dance films that I knew at the time, and lacking the expertise to present myself as an expert on the subject, I created a series of my own films with new contacts in the dance world and old friends from music. Here, Taraka Larson of Prince Rama extracts the feedback from the beginnings of Sonic Youth songs, and manipulates the samples to create a score to Chloe and Katherine (then regularly performing as a duo) dancing at the foot of the building where Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon lived in the 90s.
Fitting My Fingers Into The Glove Of Her Flesh
Haylee Nichele, Julianna Barwick, Colin Stetson
September 19, 2012
Chelsea, NY, USA
7:26
Digital Film
Seeing Sleep No More in 2012 inspired a series of impassioned messages to the performers I had been chasing through the halls, and resulted in Haylee and I meeting for a day of experimentation on the High Line. It was still a time where endless content creators weren’t filling the streets, firing away with high resolution cameras that fit into a pocket, so the experience of the passersby witnessing impromptu performance may have felt a bit more rare…a woman dancing for herself, animating a mundane scene with the living energy of her improvised choreography.
Sugar
Stacy Grossfield, Nicole Daunic, Pietro Amato, Tracy Jennissen, Jon Bander
September 21, 2012
Manhattan Valley, NY, USA 9:00
Digital Film
I met Stacy during the filming of the Callers video with Beth Gill…one of the many downtown luminaries that appeared at the Chocolate Factory for our impromptu soul train. This piece is an extension of Stacy’s Sugar series, investigations of portals into new dimensions, the metaphor of alien presence in society and the sexual isolation that comes with otherness. Pietro Amato (of Arcade Fire’s early days and the Luyas) received these nine minutes of exploration in Riverside Park, and dreamed up a soundscape to match the new world by proxy contained within.
50/50
Katie Ward, Jessie Stein, The Luyas
July 20, 2012
Bed Stuy, NY, USA
4:07
Digital Film
Taking a visual reference from the great Loie Fuller and her collaboration in early experimental film, we transformed Melanie Maar’s Bed Stuy dance studio into a black box for the day, and Katie Ward took the train down from Montreal to grace us with her talents. The first music videos I made early in my adulthood were with the Luyas, so the continuation of our collaborations into more dance-based creations felt like a natural progression.
Heroes
Beth Gill, Enrico Wey, Kayvon Pourazar, Stacy Grossfield, Michael Rankin, Amanda Elliot, Eleanor Hullihan, Nicole Daunic, Steven Reker, Patrick Mohundro, Hannah Spongberg, Marissa Perel, Evvie Allison, Jennifer Lafferty, Courtney Drasner, Rebecca Warner, Andrew Champlin, Callers July 23, 2012
Chocolate Factory Theater, Queens, NY, USA 4:48
Digital Film
One of the earlier pieces where my work in music led to a new one in dance, this music video for Callers, a band I had filmed in an intimate series of acoustic films earlier that month, features a coterie of dancers that had worked in various ways with Beth Gill, one of the first choreographers I had seen working locally in New York. I followed each of the dancers to their homes to capture some of their natural, domestic life before assembling them all at the Chocolate Factory for a contemporary Soul Train at the behest of Beth.
In The Dark
Mary Cavett, Simone Schmidt
September 20, 2012
Union Square Park, NY, USA
6:02
Digital Film
A blindfolded dancer waltzes alone to the music of the Mills Brothers, as interpreted by Simone Schmidt. A small sign reading, “Free Slow Dances” is placed nearby, and Mary spends two hours awaiting her partners. Months later at the premiere of this series of films, released as “Baryon”, she sees all of the people brave enough to engage with her for the first time, remembering each only by their touch.
4X4
Lily Ockwell, White Hinterland
November 25, 2013
Harlem, NY, USA 5:10
Digital Film
A stylistic experiment at the beginning stages of the Pressur.es project…four lights, four angles, 4/4 time. I met Lily Ockwell through Emily Terndrup and fashioned the plan for this piece in the weeks before she left to start devising The Drowned Man with Punchdrunk in London. We rented the same attic of a Pentecostal church that I had used for the first in the series with Emery LeCrone and prayed that the haze wouldn’t bring the fire department calling. Casey Dienel provided the score, responding to the same prompts, a favor after our work together on her project White Hinterland months before.
The Gates
Mariel Lumen, Skyler Skjelset
May 4, 2013 Yonkers, NY, USA 14:54
Digital Film
The first long-form film in the Pressur.es series came from an idea of depicting five aspects of one woman’s psychology, each expressed simultaneously through costume, location and performance and edited to show the relationships between them and how they work to make up a whole.
Mariel and I broke into the long-disused site of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Yonkers, NY with five dresses having rehearsed the different aspects in the weeks leading up to the shoot day. Skyler Skjelset composed the score in isolation after the completion of the film’s edit in the weeks following.
Triskelion
Haylee Nichele, Megan Frederick, Tim Fain
May 4, 2014
Maspeth, NY, USA
6:45
Digital Film
An exploration of thirds and their extensions through composition and choreography...I had met Tim Fain after his collaboration with Philip Glass and Haylee for their Portals project and had finished filming a piece at the newly-christened Knockdown Center for a music video weeks earlier with Eddi Front. I was in the early stages of developing The Wilder Papers with Emily Terndrup, and decided to use the ruins behind the building as a case study of the space and its aesthetics on film.
Rumores De La Calenta y Malaguena
Leslie Kraus, Pedro Soler, Philippe Mouratoglou March 3, 2015
Bushwick, NY, USA
12:49
Digital Film
The music of Isaac Albéniz plays in call and response with a master of flamenco and the foremost interpreter of the composer on the classical guitar, sources and generational destinations mixing to provide a score for the interpretations of an even more contemporary source, the choreography of Leslie Kraus. Pedro is the father of Clara Claus, who I worked with later for her beautiful Motif series.
The Next Wave
Chanon Judson, Emily Terndrup, Jeff Curtain
May 21, 2015
Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY, USA 0:33 Digital Film
Emily and I were invited to create a film to launch the 2015 Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music. The first piece of dance I saw in New York was the BAM production of Pina’s Vollmond at Next Wave in 2010, so it was an exciting opportunity to create work inside the buildings that had meant so much to me since then. We asked Chanon to join us from Urban Bush Women, and spent several days in the new Fisher space crawling in the top nets, turning on and off the hundreds of lights and exploring the mandated concepts of multiplicity and metamorphosis together.
He Venido
Taylor Drury, Jenna Saccurato, Los Zefiros
December 3, 2017
Bed Stuy, NY, USA 3:36
Digital Film
Years before Taylor would go on to work with the Pina Bausch company in Wuppertal, we planned a day away from her and Jenna’s regular company work in Chelsea to use the Los Zefiros classic of universal love, He Venido, as our inspiration on the rooftop attached to one of my old studios in Brooklyn. We filmed once at dusk, but somehow the footage was corrupted and lost… we joined each other again the following week without complaint on an unseasonably warm December afternoon to begin the process anew.
MUSIC VIDEO
Wedding
Emily Terndrup, Marissa Nadler
January 20, 2013
Greenpoint, NY, USA
3:59
Digital Film
In many ways, this is where things started to get serious for me in dance. Something clicked when I watched Emily look at the frame in our camera, mirror that image in her mind and perform inside it. Marissa gave us our first opportunity to play in the context of a music video, and there was an immediate effect. It was published within a mainstream media outlet as soon as we finished the edit, and it was a time when that was a novelty, especially in our own nascent journey into the more commercial side of the thing we were attempting. It’s hard to place myself in that context at this point in my life…but many things found their genesis that day the three of us filmed this piece in Studio X at the old Triskelion building.
Only Way
Lily Ockwell, Will Thompson, Philip Weinrobe, Adrianne Lenker, Cassandra Jenkins, Buck Meek
May 22, 2023
Margate, UK 4:34
Digital Film
After a year and half devising, refining and daily performing Punchdrunk’s production, The Burnt City, Lily and Will were craving a creation centered anywhere but the ruins of Troy, so we drove to the coast to explore Margate and its dilapidated splendor for a few, fending off their dog’s many suitors and jumping from place to place to form a jigsaw puzzle capture of a simple choreography. When we returned, Phil and his many collaborators were in touch about the want to pair a film to their new music, and we married the two towards the piece you see here.
Aveluit: II
Jacalyn Tatro, Scarcity
July 24, 2021
Red Hook, NY, USA
10:54
Digital Film
Shortly after returning from a month-long journey to Iceland to make a piece with Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir in which we scoured the countryside for traces of time in nature, I was contacted by Brendon Randall-Myers to create a new piece for his latest ensemble, Scarcity. The high-intensity sounds felt like they needed a bold visual direction, so I brought a powerful young dancer I had met through Bobbi Jene Smith into the studio to explore choreography that evoked the black rock and seismic evidence of the scenes I had found in my recent travels. Jacalyn watched a monitor of herself affected into four mirrored quadrants and composed a physical response to the sounds. The individual tracks of the recording were then attached to each of the quadrants, and images of Icelandic rock and lava added, modulating over time and each instance temporally attached to the visual to create the piece you see here.
Sara
Diane Cluck, Miguel Guitierrez, Joy Rahman
April 3, 2013
Charlottesville, VA, USA 4:17
Digital Film
I had, for a long time, been a devout fan of Diane’s music…Oh Vanille being one of the most powerful recordings I can ever remember finding, and which moves me to this day. After we had worked together on several music films over the years, she asked whether I would like to work with her and Miguel to create her first music video. The moments in the studio rehearsing his choreography and watching worlds collide with Diane were touching…The piece holds a special significance to my beginnings in dance and in New York itself.
Devotion
Gatti, Ching I Chang, Nikolas Owens, Alejandro Grecco August 17, 2020
Fort Greene, NY, USA 4:57
Digital Film
Another of the constraint-based pieces that somehow found its way (due in total to the simple beauty of the performances) to a cohesiveness and aesthetic that would not lead you to believe that it was filmed in about 160 square feet of space in a basement sublet during the worst of the fear and uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic. A meditation on Godard’s Alphaville, this piece gave me some hope and inspiration during a very dark chapter of life.
How Simple
Frances Quinlan, Rebecca Margolick, Mark Quinlan, Joe Reinhart, Tyler Long, Rachel Sanders, Lucy Stone, Nicky Devine, Cat Park, CJ Harvey
March 22, 2018
Philadelphia, PA, USA
3:50
Digital Film
Hop Along are deities to the indie rock fans of Philadelphia, and Frances’ callout to find a director that could help not only appear in her first music video, but also dance her way through it was a call I did not resist. This was one of those gorgeous weekends of fulfilling work but also connected friendship and joy…so many of these pieces stand now as a testament to the experience of the life that was led around them…I love watching this piece and remembering the days we spent making it.
Interior
Emily Terndrup, Rebecca Margolick, Mauro Remiddi
March 31, 2015
Bed Stuy, NY, USA
3:05
Digital Film
Musically created as a pseudonym for Mauro to start his first record label, Emily, Rebecca and I took the commission for a visual as an opportunity to experiment, and I introduced a methodology that I had developed with Ruby Kato Attwood years before for our No Unholy Mountain for Noveller, this time switching light sources for a body in motion. Emily and I would manipulate semi-translucent, inanimate objects in front of the lens to obscure and reveal Rebecca as she improvised, and we would all watch on the over-contrasted monitor and adjust to what we saw there. It’s a process that I have taken forward as an essential when trying to exceed the capability of a flat frame to convey abstraction.
Rain’s Break
Stephanie Crousillat, Lucy Gooch
February 26, 2021
Knotty Pine, NY, USA
3:41
Digital Film
Lucy’s email came to me in a state of despondency, and it was such a joyful transformation to hear about her need, and to listen to the absolutely gorgeous piece of music that she had composed…She lifted me out of a terminal malaise, and allowed me to deepen my friendship with a dancer and choreographer so dear to me. Stephanie brought me up to her family’s land in Central New York, and we engaged with the drama of a woman longing and desperate for something numinous and intangible in the woods…we cooked, trudged and engaged in a process free from complication (other than not wanting to stop) long after we should have been turning into bed each evening…and we wore electric socks while we did it.
Dead City Emily
Emily Terndrup, Austin Tyson, Marissa Nadler
August 10, 2014
Bed Stuy, NY, USA
6:00
Digital Film
Early in my collaborations with Emily Terndrup, we seemed to have a new project to complete every two weeks. The commissions were small, but they were plentiful, and we were both excited and interested to keep growing with each project. Marissa had given us the opportunity to work together our first time a year before on Wedding, and this was a chance to involve a fellow dancer that Emily loved from her days at the McKittrick Hotel, Austin Tyson. We tried to create an emotional narrative within a single polluted glass door frame, borrowed from a nearby flea market, and mounted to the ceiling of the month-long sublet that I was occupying that summer, early as I was in my time in New York.
Pressure
Mariel Lumen, Brendan Duggan, Daniel Staaf, Kenna Tuski, Connie Shiau, Matthew Perez, Ernesto Breton, Shelby Terrell, Emily Terndrup, Shara Nova
August 17, 2014
Queens, NY, USA 4:29
Digital Film
The first music video I made that felt…populous…so many voices that needed answers…it was an exciting new beginning, but an adjustment. It was also the first time I worked on a visual specifically meant to represent a music artist and had them overjoyed with the result, without a single note. The scale of the production definitely led me in a different direction (towards intimacy and spareness), but the memories of the days on this piece are happy as I think of them now.
Black Sheep (Trouble Mix)
Stephanie Troyak, Rebecca Margolick, Matilda Sakamoto, Anthony Richardson, Mary Cavett, Evelyn Chen, Shara Nova
March 18, 2023
Red Hook, NY, USA 4:24
Digital Film
Shara has a voice that allows anyone to find and free the hidden and repressed creature within themselves…whether that beast wants to cry or scream or lash out, it finds a common thread in Shara’s songs and unleashes…It was a beautiful few days introducing her song to these performers and watching them release their demons one by one.
Never Were The Way She Was
Shelby Terrell, Holls Sass, Brian Castillo, Haylee Nichele, Betheny Merola, Elizabeth Mcguire, Ariana Champlin, Taylor Jo Oxley, Alexandra Lockhart, Louise Eberle, Ellen Maynard, Maddie Irmen, Gwendolyn Gussman, Michelle Sagarminaga, Avla Weisz, Moth Morgenson, Bre Short, Fanny Sura, Claudia Germuga, Hannah Garner, Nikki Theroux, Sarah Neufeld, Colin Stetson May 10, 2015 Queens, NY, USA 8:45
Digital Film
My only choreographic endeavor in the entirety of this collection: twenty classically-trained dancers arrive at an underground crypt, are asked to don full black robes and move through rigid physicality to evoke an ocean of bodies writhing towards a Butohlike internal pain and a final collapse. I have promised that my next venture into movement direction will involve a bit more fun for the cast.
Score The Sky
Rebecca Margolick, Nicole Von Arx, Lost Horizons, Simon Raymonde, Liela Moss
July 28, 2017
Buffalo, NY, USA 4:02
Digital Film
As a teenager in the 90s, Cocteau Twins were like some kind of earth-fallen gods, so when Simon Raymode got in touch to create a film to accompany a song for his new project, Lost Horizons, the inspiration was immediate. I had recently met Liz McEnaney, a magical woman who had access to a giant, abandoned steamship adjacent to a phalanx of grain silos up in Buffalo, so Rebecca, Nicole and I packed the kitchen sink into a rented van, and drove the eight hours straight up to Buffalo to explore…
BOBBI JENE SMITH
Thanks For The Dance
Bobbi Jene Smith, Marta Miller
November 2, 2019
Bed Stuy, NY, USA
4:23
Digital Film
Commissioned to accompany the release of Leonard Cohen’s posthumous album of the same name, a woman dances alone in her home at different stages of her life, remembering an absent lover and dancing with his memory.
The night Mr. Cohen died, Bobbi and I sat listening to his music, reading his poetry and drinking red wine, early in our friendship and at the beginning of so many adventures together.
Mercy
Bobbi Jene Smith, Calvin Royal III, Melissa Toogood, Max Richter July 18, 2020
Rockaway Beach, Queens, NY, USA 6:17
Digital Film
During the waning days of the pandemic in New York, the Vail Dance Festival commissioned a piece from Bobbi and I for their modified showing online, so we ventured out to the Rockaways for the day to make it our set for the day. Max Richter and Mari Samuelsen’s “Mercy” made such a perfect accompaniment to Calvin, Melissa and Bobbi’s gentle duet with the ocean behind them…it was a perfect remedy for the lingering isolation of that time.
A Study On Effort
Bobbi Jene Smith, Keir GoGwilt
June 17, 2016
Toronto, ON, Canada
40:17
Digital Film
Filmed at the, then newly-opened, sprawling power plant turned arts center, Hearn Generating Station, this piece is an amalgam of two single takes of Bobbi and Keir performing with and without an audience during the Luminato Festival.
The day began by meeting Bobbi on Queen St in the city I had left many years earlier to make my way to New York. We went from one hardware shop to the next trying to find a mid-sized sandbag with a fine/dry sand rather than the coarse and damp variety found in the great majority. I invited old friends from Toronto to join and reveled in the aspects of past and present colliding in that room.
Metamorphosis Two
Philip Glass, Bobbi Jene Smith, Saori Tsukada October 28, 2020
North Adams, MA, and East Village, NY, USA 7:39
Digital Film and Digital Video
Another piece filmed during the technically awkward moments of the pandemic…several attempts to bring the three of us together having been stymied, it was decided that Mr. Glass would be filmed by his partner Saori in their home, and Bobbi and I would film an improvisation together at MassMOCA, where we had been in residence for the early devising of her Broken Theater. It premiered at the yearly gala for La MaMa, where we would later make the film of Broken Theater and subsequently Bobbi would stage the theatrical version.
Harrowing
Bobbi Jene Smith, David Harvey, Skyler Skjelset
January 19, 2015
Clinton Hill, NY, USA
47:18
Digital Film
This is my first collaboration with Bobbi Jene Smith. After meeting through mutual friends when she arrived back after leaving Batsheva for the first time, I invited her to spend the day at my residency in Gallim Dance Company’s parish hall space in the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew. Bobbi arrived with the lumber she had hacked through with a handsaw at my studio earlier in the week, and soon after, Oscar Isaac and Elvira Lind arrived at the door…Oscar to serve as the lone audience member, and Elvira to begin filming a follow-up to her documentary, Bobbi Jene. Filmed in a single shot and take, and later scored by Skyler Skjelset, the piece was an early sign of the importance that Bobbi’s presence would have on my work in years ahead.
Green To Gold
Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber, Dea Schraiber,
Emily Terndrup, The Antlers
September 16, 2020
Hobart, NY, USA
48:44
Digital Film
During the pandemic of 2020, I proposed a project to create a film that used each of the songs from The Antlers’ upcoming release as its score...scenes of domesticity between Bobbi and Or in an imagined life where they achieved their dream of a permanent relocation to the countryside. We depicted a growing disillusion and restlessness between them, borrowing from the general feeling of the community surrounding us in a time of deep isolation and clustering. Selfishly, it was an opportunity for me to spend several weeks away from the grim realities of the city while it still lay culturally comatose and to join some of my dearest collaborators for some joyful creation (of art and of dinners) in the woods.
SPECTACLE
The Wilder Papers
Emily Terndrup, Mallory Rosenthal, Mariel Lumen, Austin Goodwin, Hannah Button, Amy Moore, Emma Judkins, Shelby Terrell, Kacie Boblitt, Brendan Duggan, Austin Tyson, Kenna Tuski, Julianna Barwick, Skyler Skjelset, Sarah Lipstate, Mauro Remiddi, Hannah Epperson, Helen Terndrup June 17, 2014
The Knockdown Center, NY, USA
10:09
Digital Film
The first piece of dance theater that Emily and I engaged in together, a confluence of all the excitement I had surrounding new media (dance and immersive theater) mixed with a fetish for post-war sentiment and electronics, atemporal narrative and contemporary scoring…the story of Julian Wilder and Dorienne Lee. This piece was the beginning of something very novel in my life and my practice, and its lessons still serve me in my work today.
Debut
Emily Terndrup, Rebecca Margolick, Emma Judkins, Brendan Duggan, Matthew Ortner, Ross Katen, Tj Spaur, Ruby Kato Attwood, Julianna Barwick, Mauro Remiddi, Hannah Epperson, John Ancheta, Ruby Kato Attwood, Jessie Stein, David Moore, Leigh Stuart, Greg Chodzik, Will Mcevoy, Jeremy Viner, Patrick Breiner, Derek Roe, James Pagano, Mallory Rosenthal, Helen Terndrup October 7, 2014
The Knockdown Center, NY, USA 8:02
Digital Film
My second piece of theater with Emily Terndrup and Ruby Kato Attwood, the story of seven teenagers in the 1970s who sneak away from their senior prom to drop acid in an abandoned building and experience a rapid and turbulent journey into awareness and adulthood. This was a piece that turned my life on its head, sending me on a trajectory not dissimilar to our characters as their youth is left behind and a strange and formidable future opens up ahead in an instant. These films are scenes captured live from the proceedings alongside material filmed in the lead up to the showings scored by Hannah Epperson, Julianna Barwick and Ruby Kato Attwood.
Fable
Emily Terndrup, Rosalie Lowe, Paul Corning, Dan Walczak, Daniel Staaf, Rebecca Margolick, Kenna Tuski, Ashley Robicheaux, Maxwell Perkins, Ruby Kato Attwood, Hannah Epperson, David Moore, Julianna Barwick, Mauro Remiddi, Blonde Redhead, Sarah Neufeld, Skyler Skjelset, White Hinterland, Taraka Larson October 8, 2015
The Knockdown Center, NY, USA 12:29 Digital Film
Emily and my third piece of theater with Ruby Kato Attwood, the story of a writer in the midst of a profound block, an exploration of the pathways of their psychology, the nature of their repression and the looping of their plight. The technical elements of this production were cursed from the start, though miraculously that was not felt by the time the curtains were raised for the two weeks of shows. We all walked away half dead and wondering if we had seen enough of each other for a lifetime, but it has turned out to be one of the pieces I have been most proud to be a part of. These films comprise the condensed scenes from the entire run and a promotional piece which was shown in the lead up.
The Beginning Of Memory
Meg Harper, Shara Nova, Laurie Anderson January 19, 2020
New York, NY, USA 2:58 Digital Film
At the outset of 2020, Laurie Anderson asked Shara, Meg and I to re-interpret her beautiful song The Beginning Of Memory as a cover and a film for the gala surrounding her naming as the Vanguard of the Public Theater for that season.
Having explored Meg’s work with Merce Cunningham and her performances with Lucinda Childs and Robert Wilson in the years that followed, and having worked so closely with Shara in the past with her My Brightest Diamond project, reuniting with Laurie and those two for this project was a singular pleasure that I doubt will be matched. Watching Meg watch herself during the gala is a particular treasure to remember.
Dynamics Of Vanishing Bodies - Trem Chorale
Belinda McGuire, Rebecca Margolick, Andrea Murillo, Isabel Umali, Emma Judkins, Brendon Randall-Myers, Patrick Breiner, Helga Davis
March 16, 2017
Bed Stuy, NY, USA 4:56
Digital Film
Originally begun as a piece called Mutiny with the saxophonist Patrick Breiner by invitation from Helga Davis for her My Favorite Things series at National Sawdust in which five woman projected on a 20’ screen above two men realize that their images are being manipulated by the figures at their feet and gradually rebel against their control until they stare silently at the audience in their complicity. These images sat dormant for years after the showing until Brendon Randall-Myers inquired about pairing one of his new compositions with some of my films. I asked the permission of the dancers, and with all on board, we created a new form of the temporally-activated piece to find a home outside of the live spectacle.
3 Shepherds
Kayla Farrish, Kerime Konur, Alexander Diaz
September 6, 2020
Bushwick, NY, USA
14:58
Digital Film
This piece was a beautiful outlier that arose from the physical and technical constraints of the pandemic. Kayla and I conspired to broadcast on both of our feeds an unannounced piece filmed live in the streets of Bushwick that only those with the patience and curiosity to stop their scrolling and pay attention would see as it happened. It is shown here for the first time beyond that impromptu uplink.
On The Bowery
Lily Ockwell, Daniel Staaf, Evelyn Chen, Andrea Murillo,
Dan Walczak
April 2, 2016
The Bowery, NY, USA
4:33
Digital Film
A collaborative film with the New Museum pairing acapella versions of songs with a deep connection to the area of New York surrounding the museum to individual choreographic vignettes of dancers performing in situ at various sites relevant to the music. The films were played during a live event in which the performers each stepped out of the various two dimensional representations towards a light sculpture in the middle of the room and performed an evening-length work along the same theme.
Resonant Bodies
Helga Davis, Reggie Roc Gray, Droopz, Optimus
August 18, 2018
Prospect Heights, NY, USA
4:26
Digital Film
A piece technically centered in the same methodology as Mutiny, but completely transformed by the performances and context of its presentation. Reg, Droopz, Optimus and Helga came to my studio for a day of improvisation leading to beautiful, intense captures and exciting conversation surrounding what we were trying to accomplish on the stage weeks later. Helga Davis will forever be a great organizer of minds in this city, and I am so happy to have been counted among them.
DANCE ON FILM
If I Seem Happy, That’s Your Mistake
Matilda Sakamoto,
Justin Mark, Erica Lutz, Shane Jensen
August 9, 2019
Prospect Park, NY, USA 11:51
Digital Film
My first introduction to Matilda was at an event put on by Georgia Usborne at the Ace Hotel in Flatiron where she performed a mostly improvised opus on loneliness and desperation through dance, music and audience participation (via a microphone handed around). I stayed through two loops of the entire night’s programming to watch it again because I found it so moving. We met later that night and started to conspire towards creating this filmed version of the piece in the weeks to follow.
Otis Walks Into The Woods
Emily Terndrup, Maxwell Perkins, Mary Lattimore October 21, 2015
The Glass House, New Canaan, CT, USA 9:22
Digital Film
In the days following the load-out of Emily and my first piece of theater at the Knockdown Center, The Wilder Papers, we took the train north to New Canaan and the Philip Johnson Glass House to create a site-specific piece, the first of three that I would make there after a year of work on the Night Sounds program where I made music films with Julianna Barwick, Grouper, ARP and many others. Using the relationship of two people throwing emotional stones in glass houses as our starting point, we spent the day exploring, devising and performing in each of the sections of the property and, purportedly, gave the infinity pool one of the last swims of its life as the sun started to set. Mary Lattimore provided a song waiting to be released on her latest record, and we published the two in tandem months later.
Always Dancing And Gone
Chloe Kernaghan
December 19, 2022
Bed Stuy, NY, USA
2:21 8mm Film
Over the years, Chloe has been a dear friend and collaborator, and we make regular experiments into form together that often sit by the wayside for long periods, but provide a chance to connect and to explore new pathways forward in our independent practices. On this occasion, I asked Chloe to come to my apartment to stage a series of scenes that I would use to tell a story about a dream I had recently had in which she had died. Feeling that the tone would be too self-serious if I used my own voice, and inspired by Laurie Anderson’s vocal manipulations, I employed a synthetic voice generator through phonetic prompts to be my voice by proxy in the tale.
Haylee Nichele, Dan Walczak, Emma Judkins, Mary Cavett, David Moore, Clara Claus
Various, 2014-2016 Various 14:32 Digital Film
In Motif, beginning with a series of paintings by Clara Claus reproduced onto cards, dozens of artists from across the world drew indeterminate pulls from the deck to determine what images they would respond to in film and music. I was paired with David Moore of Bing & Ruth and proceeded to set scenarios with various collaborators in movement at a series of locations across Brooklyn and Queens. During two subsequent music video shoots for Eddi Front and Teen Daze, I captured imagery with the dancers in the voluminous single chamber of the original Knockdown Center, the main hall of Pioneer Works and in the deserts surrounding Tucson, Arizona. Clara presented the collaborations in a largescale installation at Pioneer Works the following year.
Motif
Forcelessness
Emery LeCrone, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Pierre Guilbault, Sarah Neufeld
June 25, 2013 Harlem, NY, USA 4:28
Digital Film
The first in the Pressur.es series, my only ballet film…an experiment in form where the score occupies an integral physical presence but away from the mechanics of the live experience…a series of pas de deuxs between the dancers, the choreographer and the filmmaker, the violinist and the camera, et al. It was an important film in my development and brought me acceptance into the wider realm of film festivals, starting its public life at Clermont-Ferrand later that year, and often screened to this day in dance-focused programming.
Figure & Ground
Georgia Usborne, Rebecca Margolick, Emma Judkins, Brendan Duggan, Paul Corning, Trixie Whitley, Skyler Skjelset
Various Dates
Various Locations 5:22
Digital Film
An amalgam of several projects including a music video with Trixie Whitley for her song, Soft Spoken Words, an experimental day filming the promotional material for Emily Terndrup and my third theater work, Fable, and a film with Emily, Rebecca Margolick and I for Adelyn Hopper. During the lead up to Fable’s presentation, we held a benefit concert where Julianna Barwick, Hannah Epperson and Skyler Skjelset created live scores for a series of films thematically associated with the material of the show. This film was played there and is here paired with the live score that Skyler Skjelset performed that evening.
Impermanence
Rebecca Margolick, Stephanie Crousillat, Peter Silberman, Yayoi Kusama, Natasha Takemoto, Joy Wolcott
November 1, 2016
The Glass House, New Canaan, CT, USA
34:20
Digital Film
If Otis Walks Into The Woods was an attempt to set scenes of pressure and disillusionment onto the site of the Glass House, Impermanence would be its complement…a film of peace, reverence and quiet to accompany Peter Silberman at the end of his battle with tinnitus and the recalibration to the aggressive change that illness brought. The minimal, monastic designs of Natasha and Joy, the myriad harmonies of Rebecca and Stephanie’s explorations of the site, Yayoi Kusama’s indeterminate globes for her Narcissus Garden, and Peter’s own gentle performances made for an idyllic day that none of us were in a rush to leave by the end.
Response
Mary Cavett, Hannah Epperson, Skyler Skjelset
May 23, 2015
Tuscon, AZ, USA
12:51
Digital Film
In 2015, Mary and I flew to her native Arizona to film material meant for a music video to accompany Teen Daze’s new song, Morning World. While we were there, we explored a narrative of two women, one in back and one in white, one oppressed by the enormity of the world, crushing her into the earth, and the other by the shrinking dimensions of a domed enclosure that she thrashes and fights against at every turn.
The following year, we decided to screen an extended version of this film as a diptych that would be live scored by Hannah Epperson and Skyler Skjelset, each taking cues from alternate sides of the screen. The film is presented here with that score.
Variations On The Watermill
Vinson Fraley February 14, 2023
The Watermill Center, NY, USA 7:28 Digital Film
Vinson is an artist that I have worked with in New York from the beginning…first in an early romantic film by Mary John Frank, later in the work of Bobbi Jene Smith and lately in a series of Vinson’s own films…this one a mutual exploration of Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center filmed during a week in residency alongside Lea Bertucci and Tuçe Yasak...the two of us investigating each of the sites, already rich in their own meaning but here imbued with Vinson’s first impressions and my own observations of their confluence.
The Friday Experiment
Ryan Van Compernolle, Sarah Stanley, Andrea Murillo
February 3, 2016
Clinton Hill, NY, USA
9:25
Digital Film
In 2016, I was given a residency at the Gallim’s space in the parish hall of the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew where I sought to expand my practice beyond the types of collaborations that I had been cultivating in the years prior. With Andrea, Ryan and Sarah, I sought to make a piece that was directed in turns by each one of us. We would start with the idea for a short vignette, and then at the completion of it, the turn for the next choice would pass between us in a circle, and we would follow the narrative along those lines until another stopping point. We continued this through the day, and the film you see here is the evidence of that collaborative narrative improvisation.
The Wednesday Experiment
Helga Davis, Rebecca Margolick, Kenna Tuski, Rosalie Lowe, Paul Corning
February 1, 2016
Clinton Hill, NY, USA
12:25
Digital Film
On the Wednesday of the same residency as The Friday Experiment and Harrowing, I invited artists to join in a series of improvisations that would be driven by the rhythms of dialogue, provided by the lead actors from Fable, Rosalie Lowe and Paul Corning. Their instruction was to arrive at the doors to the parish in a state of emptiness and populate the space with their mutual, verbal exploration. As they reached certain physical blocks in space, Kenna and Rebecca would shift into movement, and Helga would begin to sing and move as she found purchase within their structure… a kind of relay race towards an eventual resolution, no individual knowing quite where the progression would take them. We performed this experiment eight times that day, and this is the final one.
15|50|150: Song & Dance was printed to accompany the premiere of the eponymous installation at Williamsburg Biannual in January of 2024.
It was designed and printed by Lyndl Hall.
Special thanks to: Emily Terndrup, Rebecca Margolick, Or Schraiber, Emma Pfitzer Price, Irene Shum, Jorge Zapata, Thomas Morbitzer, Goil Amornvivat, Lyndl Hall, Melanie Maar, Lily Ockwell and Bobbi Jene Smith.
