Symphonie diagonale
Viking Eggeling, 1924
Digital, b&aw, sil., 3min30
“From a ‘body of origin’, a row of thin lines aligns itself, lengthens, curls up, initially merging into one another and then moving apart. Their modes of relationship are not fantasy games, but are guided by a mathematical rhythm (…). The delicacy of the composition is ensured by the subtle play of small groups of lines [organised in] melodic movements that transform into large forms, rich in detail, evolving rhythmically.”
– Rudolf Kurtz
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Free Radicals
Len Lye, 1958-79
16mm, b&w, sound (optic), 4min30
“Watching the images in this film shake and rush to the rhythm of the music took the place of dance and gave me, at least vicariously, an experience of aesthetic emotion on a sensory level.”
– Len Lye
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The very eye of night
Maya Deren, 1958
16mm, b&w, sound (optic), 15min
“It’s a ballet of the night, seen entirely in negative, in which the dancers are like constellations orbiting continuously in the night sky.”– Maya Deren
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Pas de deux
Norman McLaren, 1968
16mm, b&w, sound (optic), 13min20
“With Pas de deux, McLaren had already achieved an image of dance unrivalled in its category. The taste for analysing and synthesising movement (modelled on the chronophotographies of Marey and Muybridge), the melodic and harmonious use of lines, and the reinvention of reality through the medium of the cinematographic device are here brought to their peak.”
– Dick Tomasovic
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46 bis
Pascal Baes, 1988
16mm, b&w, sound (optic), 4min
“The inseparability of the ‘graceful glide’ and the ‘rhythmic breaks’ that rhythmise the attitudes of the ghostly characters in Pascal Baes’ films not only disrupts the conventional postures of everyday life, but also transforms dance into a new kind of movement.”
– Claudine Eizykman
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Lights
Marie Menken, 1964-66
Digital, color, silent, 6min50
“There’s no raison d’être for my films. I simply liked the crackling sound of the camera and, as for me it was an extension of the painting, I tried it and loved it. I’ve never been satisfied with the conventional immobility of painting, I’ve always wondered what would happen if I constantly changed the light source and the position.”
– Marie Menken
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Breakaway
Bruce Conner, 1966
Digital, b&w, sound, 5min
“The dance in Breakaway functions as a trance ritual: as the lyrics of the song announce, Toni Basil is on the verge of breaking, she wants to free herself from the ‘bonds’ of everyday life, but to do so she has to get rid of the materiality of her body; and Bruce Conner can help her break free, because he knows that in the cinema all real bodies are transformed into virtual images, and all images are inevitably doomed to disappear.”
– Bárbara Janicas
