HD video with sound, 04:53
The process for Leslie Across The Floor started from my encounter with Leslie Satin, a dancer and choreographer who studied with Merce Cunningham and teaches at NYU. I wanted to find the parallels between our fields, video and dance, and the first thing that came to mind were entrances and exists: Both the traditional dance stage and the cinematic frame have edges which one must exit and enter. These points of entry and departure also stand in for the narrative's edges: the beginning and the end. In order to create the choreography for this video I asked Leslie to improvise a movement which was an entrance that turns into an exit. She laid on her back and I laid down on my stomach, with the camera at floor-height. I shot her entering then leaving the frame, like a worm inching in reverse.
The second phase in the process happened in my studio. I decided to completely replace the video's soundtrack: instead of the sound of a soft body being pushed/dragged across a polished wood floor, I recorded, in perfect synchronicity with Leslie's movements, the sound of what I imagine Richard Serra's sculptures, which are made of forged steel and weigh many tons, sound like when dragged across an industrial cement floor.
This is the visual score I used to create a soundscape for this video, which features dancer and choreographer Leslie Satin inching her way, worm-like, across a dance studio floor. I replaced the natural sound of the dancer’s body on polished wood flooring with what is intended to sound like a Richard Serra sculpture being dragged across a concrete landing. This is the score I used to perform the sounds in sync with the dancer’s motions.