Spectacle
Series of interdisciplinary choreographic experiments at Seoul Dance Center, 2021-2022
Spectacle is an interedisciplinary project that took place at Seoul Dance Center during the pandemic. Yun Lee rents a Bolex Camera from Handmade Film Lab Space Cell and asks two dancers, a sound technician, and a photographer to bring a Go-pro camera, an iPad, and their iPhones for a series of choreographic experiments that question the role of a spectator.
Cameras become silent voyeurs, dancers, and participants in the games that are played. How can the act of putting up a dance performance be translated into another discipline, film? How do we organize ourselves as performers without the audience being present? How do we perform for imminent viewership? What is our relationship to ‘spectacle’ while playing games?
These questions were formulated in dialogue with the realities of rehearsing and performing dance during the pandemic and also with Yvonne Rainer’s “No Manifesto” from 1965 that declares “no to spectacle.”
A game is designed for the performers to fail.
Performers are asked to throw a ball of clay and hit the bullseye (the lens of the Bolex camera) from a calculated distance. Rhythms of failures emmerge in black and white film with sound, Failing (2022), which was shot in 16mm during the performance and was hand-processed and edited by the choreographer. The sound recorded by Minuk Choi during the game was digitally processed to accompany the film.
digital and film photography by Haeun Roh
One dancer holds the Bolex Camera while two dancers roll the dancer holding the camera. The spine of the camera holder stays rounded to protect the camera while being rolled.
In the ‘splicing’ of the film, which involved manually cutting the film into pieces and taping them together, the choreographer selects the footage that contains negative space in between bodies in motion. How might the negative space dance in the unit of of 24 frames per second? What are the rhythms that emerge from the movement of space caught in between figures?
digital and film photography by Haeun Roh
digital and film photography by Haeun Roh
In the grassy courtyard, performers are challenged to hang on the ledge for 27 seconds, the time a Bolex camera can film one take before it has to be rewound. Camera taped to their bodies, performers fail more and fall.