Nadia Oussenko, On Falling

Chicago-based dance filmmaker Nadia Oussenko presents and discusses her works of dance on film, giving visitors a chance to talk to talk to a local dance filmmaker about her process in a casual and intimate setting.

Chicago-based artist Nadia Oussenko has been combining choreography and filmmaking into “screen dances” since 2004. Her pieces invite the viewer to share a physical experience with dancers onscreen through camera movement and unique locations (bus stops, bridges, beaches) that compliment the choreography in surprising ways. The program will include: Nothing to See/Hear, a duet that explores the intricate workings of an unraveling relationship; Revised and Revisited, choreographed by Chicago artist Erica Mott, where she traces the memory of her ancestry; and Keep it Real, a tongue-in-cheek duet where dancers find space behind an abandoned building to bust a move. Also on the bill are On Falling. . . (2009), a series of vignettes about surrender, Connect 4 (2006), where four dancers work within four spaces of a warehouse to connect a single movement phrase, and Up There (2006), a tense solo piece set in a bar about breaking social decorum. (2006 – 2011, 52 min., video)

Artist Bio

Nadia Oussenko is a choreographer, filmmaker, and photographer.  She completed her MFA in Dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Oussenko is best known for her dance for the camera, Connect 4, which was screened this March at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival. Additionally her work has been screened at ADF Dancing for the Camera Festival of Video and Dance, Moves  International Festival of Movement on Screen in Manchester, England, and Chicago Short Chicago Short Comedy Video and Film Festival. Oussenko recently completed a solo dance film, On Falling. . . funded by Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and premiered at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, IL.  She has also co-directed dance films with Chicago artists Molly Shanahan, Erica Mott, and Kenneth Yoder.  Currently she is co-directing Leather Queen, a documentary about Chicago queer comedian and burlesque performer, Tamale. http://nadiaoussenko.com/

Curated by Mark Jeffery, Performance Artist, Curator of IN>TIME 2013 and Assistant Professor Performance at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, enjoy an afternoon of performance on film, including the work of Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci, Fiona Wright, Becky Edmunds, Angela Ellsworth, Marisa Zanotti, and Julie Laffin.

Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci

Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci work together in Paris. Their work was shown at La Maison Rouge, Paris and attitudes, Geneva in 2008, at The South London Gallery  in 2009, at CAC Brétigny  (cur. Pierre Bal-Blanc) in 2010 and at Villa Medicis ,Roma (cur. Eric de Chassey) in 2011. They also participated to the group exihibition , The Living Currency (cur. Pierre Bal Blanc) Museum of Modern Art , Warsaw (2010) / 6 Berlin Biennal (2010), On line : Drawing through the Twentieth Century  (cur. Connie Butler and Catherine de Zegher ) at MoMA, New York (2010) and showed at the Louvre in October 2011 (cur. Marcella Lista). This year’s projects include two solo exhibitions at FRAC Lorraine, Metz and at Consortium, Dijon.

Screening:

Untitled, 2000. Kleenex, table. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2004. 2 sheets of A4 paper. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2004. Sellotape, table. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2006. 4 sheets of A4 paper, table. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2006. Cotton thread, table. Courtesy the artist and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2008. Sheet of A4 paper, lights. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2009. Steel ball (diameter : 10mm), table. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Untitled, 2011. Black pencils, table. Courtesy the artists and  Marcelle Alix Gallery, Paris

Becky Edmunds and Fiona Wright

Becky Edmunds (b.UK, 1966) trained as a dancer and choreographer at Laban Centre, London in the mid 1980’s.In 1988, she met with artist Michael Mayhew, and together they formed the live art company, Mayhew and Edmunds, in Manchester. Since 1993, Becky has been based in Brighton, UK.  She continued to produce live work, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with visual artists, photographers, scientists and dance artists until 2000, when she shifted to a screen-based practice. Her video work now has two distinct strands, which inform and influence each other. She works as a dance and performance videographer, and has collaborated with artists and organisations to produce video documentation, including Rajni Shah, Pacitti Company, Blast Theory, Gill Clarke, Fiona Wright, Girl Jonah, Gravity and Levity, South East Dance, Springdance (NL).

Fiona Wright (b. London 1966) is an independent artist who makes solo and collaborative performances through writing and choreography with a focus on finding a personalised yet un-confessional connection to audience. Current projects include a new one-woman theatre piece titled ‘How the Sun Lights the Earth’.

fionawright.org

girljonah.org

Screening:

On Lying Research Document.  2007 (9 mins) Courtesy the artists

salt drawing, short edit.  2004 (1 min) Courtesy the artists

Other Versions 2005 (6 mins) Courtesy the artists

girl jonah, She Was a knife Thrower’s Assistant, work-in-progress edit (5 mins) Courtesy the artists

girl jonah, this two, studio edit. (7 mins) Courtesy the artists

Angela Ellsworth

Angela Ellsworth (b. USA 1964) is an interdisciplinary artist who created compelling objects and performances. The 2010 Biennale of Sydney included the installation – Seer Bonnets: A Continuing Offense, nine bonnets pierced through with pearl-tipped corsage pins and representing the nine wives of her great-great-grandfather, who was the fifth prophet of the Mormon Church. She lives and works in Phoenix. http://www.aellsworth.com/

Screening:

Stand Back Courtesy of the artist

Julie Laffin

Julie Laffin (USA) is a performance artist and independent curator whose body of work has often featured huge gowns she creates and inserts into public spaces. The gowns provide the work with a visual anchor for task-based, durational performance/interventions that become articulated as they unfold over time. Laffin has performed nationally and internationally and her work was recently performed at the Jakarta Biennale #14. http://www.julielaffin.com/

Screening:

Kiss Piece (6 minute video excerpt of 17 hour live performance work) Courtesy of the artist

Donna Rutherford

Donna Rutherford (UK) has been working in the realm of art performance as a writer, performer, director & video maker since 1990.  Working on solo and collaborative projects in the UK and abroad with a wide range of artists, musicians and community-based participants. The work deals with versions of personal storytelling.  Increasingly my commissioned work develops through open invites to contributors, as my faith in people’s stories is so strong.  Essentially my work looks at how people deal with, and don’t deal with things in their life – when they are pushed to extremes, or the side effects of avoidance. http://www.donnarutherford.org

Screening:

KIN Courtesy of the artist

Marisa Zanotti

Marisa Zanotti (UK) is an award-winning director and writer coming from a background of performance and choreography. Her first short film “At the end of the sentence”, received BAFTA and BIFA nominations. She is currently in post-production of Edits Film, a response to choreographer Lea Anderson’s final work with the all male dance company The Featherstonehaughs. In 2013 she will be collaborating on a touring installation with director/choreographer Charlie Morrissey.   Marisa is on the faculty at University of Chichester.

Screening:

Passing Strange and Wonderful Courtesy of the artist

*Please Note – Marisa Zanotti will be in Chicago at the screening in person.

Guest Curator Bio

Mark Jeffery (B. 1973 Doveridge, UK) is a Chicago based Performance / Installation Artist, Curator and teacher. Mark received his BA (Hons) in Visual Performance from Dartington College of Arts in UK. He was awarded a Junior Fellowship in Live Art between the University of the West of England and Arnolfini Live.

He has been making collaborative and non-collaborative performance / installation / internet / screen works and participation based exhibits in numerous spaces and contexts since 1993 including Arizona State University Art Museum, Cathedral Quarter / Igniting Ambition / Nightjar, UK, Hyde Park Art Center Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Ontological Theatre NYC, Performance Studies #15 Zagreb, Croatia, Interrupt Digital Arts Festival (Brown University), Kunsthalle Museum (Norway), Site Unseen (Chicago Cultural Centre), Nottdance (Nottingham), Taxi Gallery (Cambridge, UK), National Review of Live Art (Glasgow), ICA (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Firstsite (Colchester), Green Room (Manchester), and Chapter (Cardiff).

He was a member of Goat Island Performance Group from 1996 – 2009. He collaborated and performed in 5 of Goat Island’s works, touring and teaching extensively across North America and Europe. Teaching included a 10 yearlong annual summer performance institute at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other educational cities including Bristol, Glasgow, Nottingham, Aberystwyth, Zagreb, Prague and Berlin. Goat Island completed touring its last performance work, The Lastmaker, in February 2009. Performances included PS122 (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Eurokaz Festival (Zagreb), The House of World Cultures (Berlin), New Moves (Glasgow) and Arnolfini (Bristol). The company presented their penultimate work ‘When Will the September Roses Bloom Last Night Was Only a Comedy’ at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

Mark is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches in the Performance Department. Since 2006 he has been active curating performance in Chicago including the bi annual IN>TIME performance series with Sara Schnadt. In 2013, IN>TIME will be a city wide performance festival, Mark and Sara are currently  working with 13 organisations in Chicago. Other curatorial projects in Chicago have included OPENPORT a Performance, Language and Sound series at Links Hall (2007), Intimate and Epic: Small Acts for the City in Millennium Park(2006) in Chicago in and The Simulationists (2011) an exhibition, performance and symposium at The School of the Art Institute.

In 2009, Mark began a new collaborative teaching summer Performance Institute with Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson titled Abandoned Practices – something out of the ordinary: http://www.abandonedpractices.org

Jennifer Tamayo

This year, Crossroads Fund is celebrating our 30th anniversary with Reading Change, a reading and events series exploring movements for racial, social and economic justice. As part of the Reading Change series, Crossroads Fund and Dance Films Kino present Literary Migrations, a night of poetry and performance exploring and responding to immigration and immigrant rights.

Poet Jennifer Tamayo, author of Reading Change selection Red Missed Aches, will be reading from her work, which uses poetry and artwork to unpack her identity as an immigrant and a woman. Jennifer will be joined by local poets and grassroots activists for this evening of moving and thought-provoking performance exploring immigration and identity.

Other participants include CIRCA Pintig, a community theater company and Filipino arts and activist organization; FYSH, a youth group of the Korean American Resource and Cultural Center who will be performing a combination of spoken word and traditional Korean drumming; and Batey Urbano, a youth theater and activism project affiliated with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center who will be performing an excerpt from their work about Puerto Rican political prisoners.

For more information about Crossroads Fund and Reading Change see: www.crossroadsfund.org/readingchange

Crossroads Fund supports community organizations working on issues of racial, social and economic justice in the Chicago area. A public foundation, Crossroads Fund pools the resources of individuals, foundations and businesses, building a broad base of support for grassroots organizations for social change.

Film Description

Reines d’un Jour (Queens for a Day) (1996) Pascal Magnin (Switzerland), 1996; 26 minutes

In this sensual and joyful film by French filmmaker Pascal Magnin, six dancers tumble down the steep slopes of the Swiss Alps, amongst cows and shepherds, somewhere between heaven and earth, to join in a traditional village festival. The villagers welcome these scruffy newcomers into their festivities, where mischief, pranks and love run rampant. Inspired by a folk tale about three maidens who vanished because they ignored the prohibition against public dancing.

Film Credits and Artist Bio

Directed by Pascal Magnin
Original concept by Pascal Magnin, Marie Nespolo, Christine Kung
Choreography and Performance by Veronique Ferrero, Marie Nespolo, Christine Kung, Mikel Aristegui, Antonio Buil, Roberto Molo

Film Clip

Video Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75ZxACmt4b4

After the Water the Clouds

Film Description

After the Water the Clouds (2009), Carmen Rozestraten (Netherlands) 9 minutes, 47 seconds

A playful and poetic voyage of a young Catalan woman whose world becomes surreal as she encounters mythical and unusual characters. Winner of Best Art Film at the Monoco International Film Festival.

Video Clip

Video Preview: http://www.filmannex.com/movie/after-the-water-the-clouds/17822

Film Description

Bittersweet explores the relationships of three women of color to their husbands, lovers, and to one another in an alternately lyrical and violent look at race and gender politics. Bittersweet is a bold fusion of narrative text, abstract movement, and visual imagery that probes the meaning of the word bittersweet as a moment when the greatest of both joy and agony are experienced together. The 15 minute work juxtaposes the haunting voice of Nina Simone, a searing narrative, and a thrilling movement vocabulary to create a potent cauldron of emotion.

Artist Bio

David Rousseve Bio: http://www.davidrousseve.com/david.html

Video Clip

Video Preview: http://www.davidrousseve.com/bittersweet.html

Curtain of Eyes

Film Description

Curtain of Eyes (1997) Danièle Wilmouth (US/Chicago), 13 minutes

‘Curtain of Eyes’ is an experimental film which combines Japanese Butoh dance with psychological imagery and choreographed cinematography. Over a six month period, director Danièle Wilmouth collaborated with the Butoh dancer Katsura Kan, and his dance company The Saltimbanques, to create movements for both dancers and camera. The result is an exploration of intimate relationships and bi-cultural identity. The British musician Adrian Freedman composed the original score for the film.

Artist Bio

Danièle Wilmouth is fascinated by the weird science of movies and the possibility of conjuring up a soul from the cinematic machine.  Her award winning short films – CURTAIN OF EYES (1997), CONTAINERS (1999), TRACING A VEIN (2001), ROUND (2002), HULA LOU (2007), and A HERETIC’S PRIMER ON LOVE AND EXERTION (2007), are hybrids of performance art, dance, installation and cinema, which exploit the shifting hierarchies between live and screen space.  In 2010, Danièle completed her first feature length documentary, ELEANORE & THE TIMEKEEPER.  She is the recipient of a 2010 – 2011 EMPAC Dance MOViES Commission for the new film FANFARE for MARCHING BAND, an experimental music and dance film choreographed by Peter Carpenter, and featuring the circus punk marching band Mucca Pazza.  Wilmouth co-founded the independent filmmaking collective HAIRLESS FILMS during a six year residency in Japan from 1990 – 1996.  Her films have screened in festivals, museums, galleries, and on television worldwide.  She is currently on faculty in the film & video departments of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College.  More information: www.HairlessFilms.org.

Video Clip

Curtain of Eyes trailer: http://vimeo.com/12003801

Film Description

Drift (2010) Kat Cole, Eric Garcia, Peggy Peralta (US), 8 minutes

Does hitchhiking on the open road bring you closer to freedom, or closer to death? In this dance film, a pair of vagabonds hitchhike, stumble, and inch their way through striking landscapes. The pair raises their thumbs in search of a hospitable driver only to resort to a thumb war over who carries who along the dusty roadside. With no destination in mind, they crawl belly first down deserted streets and fling themselves into wooden fences.

Artist Bio

Choreography: Kat Cole and Eric Garcia

Cinematography: Peggy Peralta

Music: Man Man

Kat Cole / Eric Garcia Bio: http://www.detourdance.com/about-us/

Video Clip

Video Preview: http://vimeo.com/14756855

elena (or the misfortunes of the virtual)

Film Description

elena (or the misfortunes of the virual) (2011) Adam Rose, Glen Jennings (US / Chicago)

This dance/horror film portrays the absurd journey of Elena, a girl who practices Goth culture, who is on a quest to become a human cyborg. The process of becoming cyborg is described in the film through the aesthetics of horror, pornography, digital glitch, and the dance form of butoh. The title of the film pays tribute to Justine (or the Misfortunes of Virtue), a work by the Marquis de Sade. Elena is dance/film maker Adam Rose’s female persona. In his performance work, Rose utilizes drag and elements of BDSM to test the boundaries, with the goal of returning to a body not confined by the dualisms of male/female, mind/body, or of pleasure/pain.

Artist Bio

Developed in Collaboration: Adam Rose (Dance and Performance Artist) and Glen Jennings (Video Artist)
Music and Sound Design: Adam Rose
Vocals: Katherine Harvath
Set Design (Social Dance Experiment): Mikhail Rosenberg, Doug Johnston
Performed by Adam Rose, Jose Hernandez, Heather Lynn, Amanda Joy Calobrisi.

Adam Rose is the Artistic Director of Antibody Corporation, a non-profit organization specializing in movement arts and occult research.  He is a graduate of Antioch College (2008), where he earned a B.A. in Dance/Theater. He has shown work at many venues and events in Chicago including High Concept Laboratories, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery,  the 1901 Gallery/Theatre, praxis place, and in Mexico at the Festival de Teatro Susana Alexander.  He was awarded a 2009 LinkUp Artist Residency and a 2011 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Greenhouse grant. www.antibodycorp.org / www.antibodydance.org

Video Clip

Video Preview: http://www.antibodycorp.org/elena_virtual.html

Oscar nominated documentary GASLAND (2010) brings an environmental catastrophe happening and being covered up in the United States (and in my hometown) to light.

Film Description

“The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.”

Thank You

Dance Films Kino would like to thank the film’s distributor for donating a screening of this documentary.