Go with the flow: the artists changing the face of movement on film

A new exhibition of video art encompasses sign language kung fu, caregiving as choreography and the fluidity of gender and tradition Movement-focused film in art galleries doesn’t usually mean cool fight scene choreography or toe-tapping beats. Historical benchmarks – for example 1960s and 70s mavericks such as Bruce Nauman pacing his studio on camera, or the Judson Dance Theater’s studies of dance in daily life – typically have stark aesthetics and cerebral appeal. The exuberant works in the Whitechapel Gallery’s upcoming exhibition Moving Bodies, Moving Images, then, are doing something new. “It’s often very cinematic,” says curator Lydia Yee of films that include dazzling drag artists, human-plant hybrids and girls with superpowers performing stylised martial arts. One striking example is Hetain Patel’s superhero riff Trinity, in which a young British Indian woman channels ancestral voices to develop special powers: a forgotten means of communication blending kathak dance and kung fu. Co-written with Louise Stern, who is deaf, the project came partly, the Bolton-born Patel says, from feelings of being misunderstood, not least “having grown up being misjudged by my appearance – realising my body speaks in ways I have no control over, like the colour of my skin”. Continue reading...
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