40 Minutes
40 Minutes is a collaboration with Janet Smith, choreographer and Artistic Director at the Scottish Dance Theatre, 1997-2012.
The work was inspired by the New York Grand Central Station’s oral history project where a sound booth was placed in the station to record information from people’s lives for 40 continuous minutes. Scottish Dance Theatre’s 40 Minutes investigates the information and memories people choose to reveal from years of life experience within this specific time frame.
40 Minutes was a touring dance production for the Scottish Dance Theatre.
Choreographer – Janet Smith
Video Artist - Pernille Spence
Composer - Christopher Benstead
40 Minutes
40 Minutes is a collaboration with Janet Smith, choreographer and Artistic Director at the Scottish Dance Theatre, 1997-2012.
The work was inspired by the New York Grand Central Station’s oral history project where a sound booth was placed in the station to record information from people’s lives for 40 continuous minutes. Scottish Dance Theatre’s 40 Minutes investigates the information and memories people choose to reveal from years of life experience within this specific time frame.
40 Minutes was a touring dance production for the Scottish Dance Theatre.
Choreographer – Janet Smith
Video Artist - Pernille Spence
Composer - Christopher Benstead
I look up ... I look down
A body falls gracefully through the air, kilometres from the earth, appearing to hover between falling, then rising again in a fluid dance that suspends and evades gravity. In I look up … I look down, the laws of science are dispelled as a figure is seen floating through the air without ever approaching the ground. Moving hypnotically around the camera, the body disorients any sense of up and down, its falling motion transforming, at one point, into an ascent, buffeted by the air, toward a passing plane. The endlessly looping motion of this falling body that is both trapped in space and freed by it, creates the illusion that the artist is able to control time and space, if only for a brief moment.
I look up ... I look down
by Pernille Spence
Performer - Lynne Cocker
Camera - Bruno Brokken
Sound - John Scott
I look up ... I look down was a commission as part of Scotland’s Year of the Artist 2000 and was supported by the Scottish Arts Council, Scottish Cultural Enterprise, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee Public Art Programme and Skydive St Andrews.
