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POP
ACTION
2002
Producer/Director: Karen Bernstein
Cinematographer: Ellen Spiro
runtime:
TBA
Since forming her New York-based dance company Ringside in 1985, Elizabeth
Streb has stunned the established dance community with seemingly out-of-control
and hard-hitting action. PopACTION is an experimental biography, told
not through chronological detail, but through the quiet poetry of Streb1s
inner thoughts, and the extreme physicality of her dancer1s actions. Streb
insists on bringing her work outside the marble halls of the established
dance world with the professed belief that action is a wordless medium,
leveling out the world vocabulary and ability to communicate for positive
change and transformation. Her performing stages have included the Brooklyn
Bridge anchorage, Grand Central Station and more accepted dance venues
like the Joyce Theater. The ultimate climax of PopACTION is a massive,
high-powered performance of her latest piece, GO !, which celebrates the
likes of Annie Edson Taylor, the first woman to go over Niagara Falls
in a barrel.
Formally, PopACTION embraces experimental techniques to reflect and translate
the work of Streb to television. We blend 3 formats: raw and gritty B&W
Super 8 film; pristine, saturated 16:9 Digital Betacam; and miniDV on
a steadicam, floating through the Streb space and in and around the process
of preparation for her newest work, GO, and the ultimate goal of performing
in Las Vegas. The combination creates a dynamic action-based evocation
of the soul and intense physicality of Streb1s work. Because composed
music is never used in Streb1s choreography, the PopACTION sound design
will be created from a complex rhythmic arrangement of sounds, which emanate
from the dancers bodily contact with the walls, floor and ceiling.
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