Smaïl Kanouté – Never Twenty One (2019-2020)
For two evenings (July 17 and July 24), The Invisible Dog Art Center and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York are thrilled to invite you to a series of dance films featuring new French and international talents.
The films of different lengths and styles explore themes as diverse as identity, disability, violence, youth, transmission, and transformation and, first and foremost, the beautiful language of movement.
We will present movies by Smaïl Kanouté, the collectif (LA)HORDE, Éric Minh Cuong Castaing, Ana Pi and two documentaries, both filmed in Senegal, one about Germaine Acogny and The School of Sands by Laure Malécot and the other about young dancers from Dakar filmed by Diane Fardoun.
In the Garden of The Invisible Dog, we will serve food and drinks prepared by Lucien Chef Ambition, and David Thomson and Patricia Hoffbauer will be present to share their perspectives before and after the screening.
There will be chairs provided. Entry, food and drink are free of charge, but you can make a pay-as-you-wish donation at the door before or after the event.
These films are part of A Catalogue of Dance Films, an initiative developed by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in collaboration with Institut français, Ministry of Culture-Delegation à la danse, Maison de la danse-Numeridanse, and Centre National de la Danse.
The Invisible Dog would like to express special thanks to Nicole Birmann Bloom and Simon Courchel.
Opening
7:30pm – Opening + food and drinks
8pm – Films
Eric Minh Cuong Castaing - L’Âge d’Or (2019)
Eric Minh Cuong Castaing - L’Âge d’Or
2019
Duration: 22 min
Direction: Eric Minh Cuong Castaing
The film, first, captures the emotion of the children involved in a shared dance, in an infinite negotiation with their bodies that are not usually seen in performance, and then in a set-up inspired by “virtual reality”, in which they are equipped with glasses allowing them to see in real time what the dancers see. Exalting physical and sensitive particularities, envisaging film images through the prism of the vibrant aesthetic of bodies in motion, Eric Minh Cuong Castaing’s short film strays from a documentary towards a fiction inspired by this encounter. More than just a testimony, this film brings to life those months of the dancer-choreographer’s work in a specialized medical institute, thus becoming a free-standing, poetic work.
Co-Production: Shonen
In French with subtitles in English
Bio: A choreographer and visual artist, Eric Minh Cuong Castaing started his company Shonen in 2007. Since he has created many performances, films, and installations bringing together dance and new technologies (Augmented Reality, drones, robots.) His work has been presented in France, where he is based, and abroad. Between 2016-2019, he was an associate artist with the Ballet National de Marseille (BNM.)
Smaïl Kanouté – Never Twenty One (2019-2020)
Smaïl Kanouté - Never Twenty One
2019-2020
Duration: 7 min 11 sec
Never Twenty One, a short film co-directed with the ex-collective Racine, pays tribute to the young victims of gun violence in the United States who will never get to see the age of 21. The expression Never 21, born out of the Black Lives Matters movement, denounces the early deaths that plague the country and neighborhoods like the Bronx in particular. Based in real testimonies, the film has three dancers breathe life into the words of the victims and their families. The young dancer Smaïl Kanouté embodies different physical and musical energies to express his rage, mourn the loss of his loved ones, and evoke the vicious spiral he is locked into that pushes him to play with fire. He becomes the scar left by these sacrificed lives, their memories and their words, engraved forever in the curse of the number 21.
Smaïl Kanouté continues to explore this subject in greater depth, through the cities of NYC, Rio and Soweto, in a choreographic piece on stage created in 2021 with a dancer trio.
Production/Co-production: Smaïl Kanouté, ex-Collective Racine
Bio: Born in 1986, Smaïl Kanouté is a French-Malian graphic designer, dancer, silkscreen artist, and graduate of ENSAD. He lives and works in Paris. Among many projects, he has worked in fashion with the designer Xuly Bet and performed with Raphaelle Delauney, Radhouane El Meddeb and others. Kanoute created his own company Vivons, and has since created several performance pieces including Les Actes du Désert. In visual arts, he has frequently collaborated with the street and visual artist Philippe Baudelocque, and for Tino Sehgal’s major exhibition ‘These Associations’ at the Palais de Tokyo in 2016.
Ana Pi - Noir BLUE, The Displacements of a Dance (2018)
Ana Pi - NoirBLUE, The Displacements of a Dance
2018
Duration: 27 min
In the African continent, Brazilian-born performer and choreographer Ana Pi reconnects with her origins through the choreographic gesture, engaging in a space-time experiment that combines traditional and contemporary movements. In this dance of fertility and healing, the black skin under the blue veil is integrated with space, reenacting new forms and colors that evoke ancestry, belonging, resistance and the sense of freedom.
Bio: Ana Pi is a dancer, researcher, choreographer, and imagery artist who examines transit, displacement, belonging, overlapping, memory, colors and ordinary gestures. In 2020 she founded the organization NA MATA LAB. NoirBLUE - The Displacements of a Dance was her first documentary and VÓS (2011 - 5’30) her first experimental video essay. Creator of the “STEADY BODY; peripheral dances, sacred gestures” practice, she is currently working on the Dancing Museums project at the MAC VAL. She is collaborating on the trio WOMEN with Annabel Guérédrat and Ghyslaine Gau, on Rádio Concha with philosopher Maria Fernanda Novo, and on Race with @Favelinhadan and French pianist and composer Chassol. Ana recently received a research fellowship from the Latinoamericana program of MoMA - New York and Cisneros Institute for the project The Divine Cypher.
Intermission
9pm – Pause + Food and Drinks
9:30pm – Film
Diane Fardoun - L’appel à la danse (The Call of Dance) (2016)
Diane Fardoun - L’appel à la danse (The Call of Dance)
2017
Duration: 80 min
Direction: Diane Fardoun, with the collaboration of Hugo Bembi, Director of photography, and Pierre Durosoy, Journalist.
In Senegal, traditional dance forms preserved for generations mix with modern dance influences from around the world. The interaction between tradition and globalization, catalyzed by creative young dancers, fuels an intense new cultural context for artistic expression. The Call of Dance is a raw, immersive collection of moments in modern Senegalese dance that captures the complexity of this new era of multiplicity.
Throughout the film, dancers’ movements embody individuality, history, emotion, and aspiration, sharing everything from solitary meditations on the nuance of the everyday to the kinetics of collective experience. At the Dakar Cultural Center, in a Krump battle, by the ocean, before a wrestling contest, at a village initiation ceremony – all of life is a site for the medium of dance, and every stage contributes its own energy.
Composer: Julien Villa
Production: Screenskin Production
Bio: French-Lebanese dancer Diane Fardoun has worked as a performer of contemporary and aerial dance in French companies. A self-taught director, she founded Screenskin production in 2014 in order to create her first documentary, The Call of Dance (L’appel à la danse) about a country dear to her heart where some of her Lebanese family live. She creates a raw and intimate tone, closely approaching the dance of others with an immersive camera. The film takes a philosophical look at how bodies echo speech as they express through movement.
About David Thomson and Patricia Hoffbauer
David Thomson is a collaborative interdisciplinary artist. He has worked with Trisha Brown, Ralph Lemon, Sekou Sundiata, Marina Abramović, Yvonne Rainer, Kaneza Schaal, Yanira Castro and Okwui Okpokwasili among many others. His current practice centers on the interrogation of presence and absence in the performance of identity. Thomson is a Mabou Mines Associate Artist and has been recognized with fellowships from US Artist, LMCC, Yaddo, MacDowell and Rauschenberg.
Patricia Hoffbauer is Brazilian born, New York dance artist and has been creating dance and performance for a long time. Among other amazing accomplishments, two iterations of her work “Para-Dice” was presented by Danspace Project, she was a Gibney Dance Center DIP artist where she presented “Dances for Intimate Spaces and Friendly People” with 16 artists. She started working on her series “Getting Away with Murder” in 2017. She currently teaches at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her writings appear in The New Museum “New Visions” book; Movement Research Performance Journal; PAJ and Wesleyan Press Book, “The Sentient Archive: Bodies, Performance, and Memory.” Hoffbauer is a founding member of Yvonne Rainer’s group “The Raindears.”