Nanterre-Amandiers presents Ulla von Brandenburg’s film, It has a Golden Sun and an Elderly Grey Moon, which is the first film the artist has dedicated to colour.
It is a film that she shot on the main stage of Nanterre-Amandiers. It is a “dance film” with a long, continuous, non-edited shot. “The initial idea was to make a film in colour, unlike my previous work. From the moment colour came into one of my films, I decided that the film would be dedicated to that. The dancers are in a white space, each holding a cloth dyed a bright colour.” The stage set is structured by two great white staircases ascending to a platform. The figure of ‘the staircase’ is a recurring motif in Ulla von Brandenburg’s artistic language: sometimes overturned in her architectural spaces, it is also the first step towards narrative. In this film the staircase is a way to represent, physically and symbolically, power relations between men and the hierarchy of authority.
This is the first time Ulla von Brandenburg has engaged with dancers in her work. They manipulate coloured fabrics: and both the fabric and the colours become the subject of their interactions and ceremonies. Their movements evoke memories of ancient rituals; and their bodies are vectors of instinctive rhythms – a kind of collective state of consciousness, evoking the choreographic forms of eurhythmy and modern expressionist dance.
12 January – 15 January 2017
It has a Golden Sun and an Elderly Grey Moon
Nanterre-Amandiers
7, avenue Pablo-Picasso
92022 Nanterre
France
Image: Ulla von Brandenburg, It Has A Golden Sun and An Elderly Grey Moon, 2016, Super 16mm film, colour, sound, 22’25”