Introduced by assistant curator Caitlin Storrie.

This program focuses on the coming-together of dance (or, more precisely, choreographed movement), clothing and cinema. It draws attention to the unique ways in which these art forms explore, magnify and shape one another. At the same time, Choreography of Movement is a celebration of both fashion and cinema as collaborative media par excellence, featuring shorts by the filmmaking collectives Tell No One and Lernert & Sander, as well as a collaboration between the fashion designer Iris van Herpen, choreographer Russell Maliphant and image-makers Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.

The program concludes with Hail the New Puritan, Charles Atlas’s fictionalised documentary of British dancer Michael Clark. The film has become notorious for featuring the sublimely outrageous ’80s club icon Leigh Bowery, who designed costumes for several of Clark’s ballet productions. Bowery’s unique position of dandy-meets-clown-meets-sculpture defied established categories of creative practice (he once quipped that he liked to ‘appeal to maybe one or two people’). Yet, his influence across fashion, costume design, art and music has been enormous. Equipped with a sewing machine, endless fabrics, scotch tape, sequins, wigs, prosthetics and plenty of make-up, Bowery was among those who utilised body adornment to fashion themselves as self-made originals – the kind of extreme and uncompromised stance that eventually lead to Bowery’s entrance into the world of fine art.

Mine

UK, 2014. Dir. Tell No One for NOWNESS.
Styling by Agata Belcen.

Spatial Reverse

UK, 2015. Dir. Warren du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones for AnOther.
Fashion by Iris van Herpen.
 

Fantastic Spins

Netherlands, 2012. Dir. Lernert & Sander.
With Lawrence Evans & Thomas Naylor. Styling by Jodie Barnes.

Hail the New Puritan

USA, 1987. Dir. Charles Atlas.
With Leigh Bowery, Nicola Bowery, Les Child, Michael Clark, Anthony Doughty, Mark E. Smith, Brix Smith, Sue Tilley.

Total Running Time: c. 90 min