RainForest + Channels/Inserts

RainForest

(D. A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock, US 1968, 20 min., digital)

Channels/Inserts

(Charles Atlas, US 1982, 32 min., digital)

Choreography for Camera. Leacock and Pennebaker filmed choreographer Merce Cunningham’s dance “RainForest” as part of the 1968 Buffalo Arts Festival’s program of experimental art, music, dance, poetry and theatre called “Whose Afraid of the Avant-Garde.” The dance composition also featured music by David Tudor, costumes by Jasper Johns, and sets by Andy Warhol.

To create Channels/Inserts, Cunningham and Atlas divided the Cunningham Dance Company’s Westbeth studio into sixteen possible areas for dancing and used chance methods based on the I Ching to determine the order in which these spaces would be used, the number of dancers to be seen, and the events that would occur in each space. Atlas employed cross-cutting and animated mattes or wipes to indicate a simultaneity of dance events occurring in different spaces, as well as to allow for diversity in the continuity of the image. Introduction by Douglas Crimp, Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History, University of Rochester.