Collective Rhythm: Dance, Moves and Rhythmic Experiments
Big Screen Manchester
Partner event to Urban Moves International Festival with Big Dance 2006
22 July 2006 (10.15am – until late)
To mark Big Dance 2006, on Saturday 22 July Big Screen Manchester will be packed full of local, regional, national and international work programmed by The Bigger Picture’s new strand, Collective Rhythm: Dance, Moves and Rhythmic Experiments.
Big Dance is a national celebration of dance involving a huge range of fun dance events taking place throughout the country. Urban Moves Manchester’s feast of new and surprising outdoor dance performance, and an official festival of worldwide Cities That Dance, leads Big Dance events in Manchester with an exhilarating programme throughout the city centre.
Collective Rhythm will bring to Exchange Square audiences a poetic and visually compelling programme of works, with a variety of award winning films that experiment with what is formally understood to fall under the category of dance and moves on screen. Works range from the abstract to the wildly theatrical.
Highlights include;
Rachel Davies’, Gold is an energetic dance on screen gem, and winner of the prestigious Grand Prix Dance Screen Award at IMZ Festival in 2005, Gold is built around two young gymnasts dancing to drum and bass in their local gym. The film forms a magical and adrenaline-fuelled world, and evokes the promise of freedom in early teenage years.
LisaLouise’s Helpmehelpyou was originally a live performance of semaphore signing streamed via the internet from a rural location on the west coast of Scotland to the Arches Gallery Space in Glasgow. The subsequent video of the live stream presents a snap shot of the event. The messages signaled through semaphore comprise platitudes and advice taken from a variety of self-help manuals that address the angst and stresses of modern day living.
susan pui san lok‘s REEL is an alternating audio / video sequence drawn from regional ITV news footage held at the Media Archive of Central England (MACE), dating from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. Comprising material classified under ‘Dance’ that might variously be designated ‘cultural’, ‘national’ or ‘traditional’, footage ranges from ‘Ballroom’ to ‘Morris’ to ‘Ukrainian Folk’, while their corresponding audio are compressed into a chronological, cultural soundtrack.
Victoria Marks & Margaret Williams’, Men is an exquisite original dance film performed by 7 elderly men who are retired from careers as miners, teachers, accountants and law, and who have never performed before. The theme of the piece is mortality, with the ephemerality of human lives is set against the permanence of the Canadian Rockies. This piece is a living requiem, a celebration of lives well lived.
Miranda Pennell’s Magnetic North: Between the solitary skating girls in the great outdoors, and the solitary guitar-boys in the dingy indoors, this magnetic northern landscape evokes an enigmatic world of adolescent fantasy, yearning and imagination.
Rob Vale’s oneplace commission is part of a landscape-based contemporary arts programme spanning three years, during which time Andy Goldsworthy, among others, will explore and interpret aspects of the historic Tatton estate, Cheshire. Capturing magical moments in the park, Rob Vale has created a single dance that moves through Tatton’s grounds, through the seasons and through the different periods of time that the estate has witnessed.
Curated by Helen Wewiora, Media Curator, Cornerhouse
Programme times: 10.15 – 11.00am, 12.00 – 12.45pm, 1.30 – 5.15pm, 6.15 – 7.00pm & late night slot tbc.
Please note that programme details and screening schedules are subject to change.
The Bigger Picture is a Cornerhouse project that works in partnership with BBC Manchester, and Manchester City Council, to exhibit moving image work outside of a traditional gallery context. The programme offers a platform for artists’ film & video, short films, and artistic community moving image. Screening curated programmes and commissioning work by established and emerging artists and filmmakers, The Bigger Picture also calls for entries up to five times a year.