This film is an excerpt of a much larger piece, intended to be presented in an installation with four screens running simultaneously. As such, this film is not really intended to be viewed start to finish as you normally would. (If you do and enjoy it, please let me know!) I see this version of the project as more of a screen-saver or an art piece to have running in a space where people can tune in and out at will. It also makes a nice projection, which I did at the book release party for poet (and featured dancer in this film) Khadija Anderson's new book History of Butoh. vimeo.com/53654232
The elements of this film were shot at a group project called Butoh Meadow, curated by Brenda Varda in Los Angeles. That event involved about 30 dancers with varying degrees of training in Butoh (an avant-garde dance form from Japan) crossing a large meadow. I shot with the intention of focussing primarily on Khadija and presenting the piece at 3 frames per second, a technique I haven't explored for over 35 years.
The soundtrack consists of 9 recordings from 1902 and 1904 of Alessandro Moreschi, the only known recordings of a castrato, a man castrated before puberty to preserve his singing voice. For this project the recordings have been treated with reverb and collaged together into layers of sound.
