Successions

‘Successions’ was the fruit of a collaboration with Flock Dance Company in 2009. During ‘Transitions’ - a week long arts residency at Newlyn Art Gallery in Cornwall, dancers Rosie Taylor and Lizzie Carr choreographed a 3 minute long dance to be performed in front of a 35mm ‘stills’ camera. The piece included contact work, elements of synchronised movements, differences in height and distances from the camera.

My Pentax camera had been altered to include a motorised device that enabled the film to be pulled through the camera at different speeds. In the course of photographing the dance, I took decisions on how the image would to be engraved on the film. In controlling the speed of the motor, I could stop the film to freeze a movement, or move the film quickly to create swirls of light and colour. It was a play between the photographer, the camera and the dancers in motion.

Each 'take' photographed resulted in one image the full length of a roll of film, a choreographed narrative that has a beginning, middle and an end. ‘Dance 6977’ displayed here is one photograph from the series of works. It is shown in 6 segments as wasexhibited in 2010 at Gallery 39, Tel-Aviv. Each segment 20 X 200cm and the total length of the work was 12m. A Video art work of this project can be seen here: ‘Successions’.

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