Transformed Landscapes: The Choreographic Displacement of Location and Locomotion in Film

Abstract

Although choreographic and cinematic collaboration began over 110 years ago, little has been written on the transformative kinetic interplay between the two. In this essay I examine works by three choreographers and filmmakers, Swiss director Pascal Magnin’s Reines d’un Jour (1996), Flemish choreographer and director Wim Vandekeybus and Ultima Vez’s Roseland (1990), and Canadian director Bernar Hébert and Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock and La La La Human Steps’ Velazquez’s Little Museum (1994), exploring the ways film and video make it possible for the choreographer to displace, without replacing, the presence of the performer. Thus, how can the collaboration between the filmmaker and choreographer move the performers and viewers to a new place/si(gh)te while making the ‘place’ move at the same time? The choreographic language speaks to and with the physical location, a location that now seems more real or imbued with more ‘depth’, than the theatrical setting of a theatre. In doing so, the movement possibilities and the performers’, as well as the viewers’, somatic experiences expand into a new realm of techno-presence.