WTF Thursdays: Motion in Frame

In a world where much of our time is spent staring at flat screens, Yanaëlle’s dance films focus on the three-dimensionality of outdoor spaces. With ‘Surfaces’, she invites viewers to reconnect with their sense of touch as they behold the beauty of Eastbourne’s beaches, watch the glistening sea, and notice shingles below her bare feet. Yanaëlle’s choreographies emerge from her contemporary dance training, her improvisation practice, her various collaborations with musicians and outdoor dance explorations. She grounds her movements in her surroundings and choreographs responses to the textures and shapes felt and seen in her chosen landscape. Embracing the wind, holding pebbles in her hands, and stepping softly on sand, she also finds poetry in untouchable shadows and uses the medium of film to highlight the natural elements she dances with. Since its release in 2021, ‘Surfaces’ was also performed live at the Curve Theatre in Leicester, The Hub Studios in London, and on Eastbourne beach as part of The Performance Path, a walking tour linking several site-specific dance performances.

2. Keir Cooper: Love and Comfort (from the Album Star Quality) (5 min)

Star Quality is an attempt to harness the power of soprano voice with all the grandeur of opera and set it in conversation with electric guitar.

The compositions use various applications of technology to push this duet to extreme sonic places, finding aesthetic and emotional resonance in a language of its own. After the opening piece, a revision of an English traditional song, the album contains no words.

For the cinema, three elements are in conversation: voice, music and (written) words for screen, revisiting a 400-year-old tension as old as opera: what is dominant between the words and music and where can there be shared power.

3. Tomo Sone: Cassandra’s field of flowers (12 min)

Installation – Performance with Augmented Reality | Weaving your story

Through the pandemic in 2020, we were reminded of the vital connection between people. Performing arts expands its value and possibilities beyond the theater. It is important that the performers on the stage not only become central figures but also feel the world, move forward, and bring about change with the audience. Initially, I created the film from the installation – performance that attempted to fuse contemporary dance with digital technology, Augmented Reality, in a unique Japanese traditional Noh theater where the audience spins their own story by choosing AR filters. It is a work that makes us think about the reality, the unreality, the unknown, and the invisible world that spread outside the theater and consider the situation in which human beings are placed.

4. Andromeda Graziano: Leap of Faith (5 min)

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” James Thurber.

In a quest to change the future by understanding the past, to shine a light on self-knowledge, shared vulnerability, and kindness, a leap of faith is often required.  This film explores and shares that leap of faith.

5. Bethel Samson: Human Identity (12 min)

Human Identity (HI) is an experimental dance work that speaks about the evolution of human existence and how we relate with nature (global warming and climate change) this also speaks about how we need to put humanity first before race, tribalism, gender inequality and all. Human identity is created to spark off conversations that might lead to change of conscious behavior in humans patterns. Human Identity (HI) is a dance creation that has fusion from different dance styles like contemporary, Afro fusion and Body Explorations.

Moving Portraits tells a story of a world beyond this boundary. From the reality of two people’s mundane existence stuck inside, we see them dream of a different, more exciting life. In a landscape where possibilities feel endless and there are chances for new pathways to be carved, why is it that their paths always seem to lead them back to one another?

Moving Portraits is a short dance film that looks at themes of self-reflection and the dynamic between two people stuck in the same space. The work creates beautiful and rich images of dancers Gabby Sanders and Beatriz C. Bidault in a fantastical, dreamy landscape that is then contrasted  with a mundane reality of two people stuck in a routine, stuck inside, and stuck with each other.

2. Christiana Kosiari: Bouboulina (4 min)

Bouboulina is a video-dance work inspired by the repetitive movements of labour work in the factories of Elefsina. A senior woman, represents all female workers, once called Bouboulinas, taken by the name of the most important woman to take part in the 1821 Greek revolution against the Ottomans. The performer embodies a manifest that transforms the mechanical movement into a dance of liberation from the restricted patterns of work and inequality of the sexes.

3. Petra Haller: My Feet Rejoiced in Colour and Then My Hands Joined Too (3 min)

Petra Haller’s film, “My Feet Rejoiced in Colour and Then My Hands Joined Too,” was born from a homework assignment: “performing to the camera vs performing with the camera.” Petra found herself in the Research Studio at Chisenhale Dance Space, struggling to come up with meaningful ideas. She was exhausted, overworked, and uninspired. After beating herself up emotionally, Petra realized the only way forward was to accept her body and the situation for what they were that day. She focused on one small thing and gave it meaning. Her feet became the central focus.

In the film, colour symbolizes Petra‘s resilience and her deep hunger for life and art. It became a powerful means of self-expression, transcending the pursuit of perfection. Colour illustrates the transformation that occurs when Petra surrenders to the process and finds freedom and excitement in creation itself. The analogue camera, positioned around the audience, represents the external noise—the voices of doubt and worry that say you can’t do it.

4. Michael Mendones: Soften your Skin (5 min)

‘Soften Your Skin’ is a short collaboration with Gracie Lewis, shot at Chisenhale Dance Space in July 2024 with Justyna Janiszewska assisting with lighting design.

Inspired by Gracie’s lyrically explosive movement style, he wrote this music after a conversation about yielding to emotions in the body, and her wish to pick up her violin again and play. As a Chisenhale Collaborator member, I’m pleased to be able to share this film in the very space it was created.

5. Lauren Heckler: Hype (7 min)

Hype is an abstracted self-portrait stemming from the idea of ‘feeling joy in a body that’s out to get you’. Reflecting on learning to live differently post diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), it glitches through euphoria and collapse, the digital and the organic, isolation and community.

The choreography and music echo daily T1D management practices and gestures, with members of the cast and production team having lived experience of T1D, as well as other chronic illnesses.

By close mic recording my medical devices, the music was produced by Alice Go and includes AI manipulated sounds of needles in a sharps box, insulin pen clicks, finger prickers, and my blood glucose monitor.

The work is a love letter to life and its complexities, as experienced from a chronically ill perspective.

6. Deepanwita Roy: Poetics of the Mundane (6 min)

This film explores dance in the most ordinary spaces and moments of life.

7. Pretty Lodenyi : YENGO KUMWOYO (10 min)

YENGO KUMWOYO meaning Home at Heart is a contemporary dance film performance that depictsthe market as our second home. The concept behind this piece was to show the importance a market plays in our day to day life as a vital part of human survival. My approach to this piece was to collaborate with a talented spoken word artist and a graphic design to bring this piece to life. I wanted to highlight what a typical day life is at the market, the people, the sounds, the moments, the movements and the different parts and spots of the market. We wanted the performance to be as authentic and real as possible in this beautiful market setting. Being a proud African woman whose mum used to spend her entire day at the market since she had to work and was rarely home, the market was literally her second home. My mother coming back each evening withdifferent stories of what happened at the marketwas always intriguing and each day was a different tale. This is what inspired me to do this piece and to show the power of such a simple setting yet full of memories and tales.