BMW Tate Live: Charles Atlas and Collaborators
Installation, open rehearsals and ticketed performances
19–26 March 2013
The Tanks, Tate Modern
Bankside, London SE1 9TG, UK
T +44 (0)207 887 8888
Shown in the UK for the first time, Charles Atlas’s video installation MC9 (2012) brings together filmed footage that spans the forty-year collaboration between Atlas and acclaimed dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham.
Together Atlas and Cunningham developed a radical new way of incorporating the camera into live performance, which they referred to as ‘media dances.’ Rather than using it as a static recording device, they allowed the camera to play an active part in the choreography. In MC9, Atlas revisits and reconfigures scenes from media dances Fractions, 1978, Locale, 1980, Channels/Inserts, 1981, and Ocean, 2011.
The presentation of MC9 in The Tanks during the day is complemented by live collaborations with Paris-based dancer and choreographer duo Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud, and with New York-based performance artist Johanna Constantine and London-based electronic sound artist Helm (a.k.a. Luke Younger), in a series of open rehearsals and ticketed performances with live video editing and projection.
The audience is invited to visit the installation in The Tanks and watch open rehearsals, which will culminate in two evening ticketed performances in the space.
See details here.
Ticketed performances
Thursday 21 March, 20h: Charles Atlas with Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud
Tate Modern presents a collaboration between Charles Atlas and Paris-based dancer and choreographer duo Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud, with live video editing and projection. The performance will consist of excerpts from four works by Bengolea and Chaignaud. With Cecilia Bengolea, Ana Pi, Alex Mugler and Takashi Ueno and music by Elijah and Skilliam (Butterz, London).
Monday 25 March, 20h: Charles Atlas with Johanna Constantine and Helm
Tate Modern presents a collaboration between Charles Atlas and New York-based performance artist Johanna Constantine with live electronic music by Helm (a.k.a. Luke Younger), video editing and projection.
Johanna Constantine is a dance-based performance artist. She was a founding member of the Blacklips performance group in New York City’s East Village around 1992. She and Charles Atlas met in the early 1990s and have engaged in many projects together. Luke Younger is a sound artist and experimental musician based in London who works with a vast array of revolving instrumentation and abstract sound sources.
Curated by Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate, and Capucine Perrot, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.
BMW Tate Live is a major four-year partnership between BMW and Tate that features innovative live performances and events including and events including live web broadcast, in-gallery performance, seminars and workshops.
