Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
ATLAS VARIATIONS: THE MOVING-IMAGE WORK OF CHARLES ATLAS
May 8 – June 27
May 8 - June 27, 2024
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
Anthology is overjoyed to present a major survey – throughout May and June – of the moving-image work of the one-and-only Charles Atlas. An exceptionally prolific, protean, and inventive artist, Atlas has collaborated for the past fifty years with an extraordinary array of choreographers, dancers, musicians, actors, and performance artists, and has himself occupied a crucial role at the intersection of the worlds of art, film, video, performance, dance, and installation. During the course of his career, he has pioneered the medium of videodance, documented the nightlife and performance scenes of New York City throughout the past several decades, and created some of the most inspired works of installation art in recent memory. Arguably no other single figure has contributed as substantially to so many of the most advanced and important currents in American culture since the 1970s, both as a chronicler, collaborator, and creator.
Atlas’s films and videos have taken so many forms and involved so many collaborations that his moving-image career can only be conveyed through a large-scale series. Indeed, even this 10-program survey represents a partial retrospective: since Anthology focused on Atlas’s seminal collaborations with Merce Cunningham (with whom he collaborated on numerous films beginning in 1975) during our Cunningham centennial screenings in 2019, we’ve chosen to focus on Atlas’s other collaborations and solo works here. Encompassing some of his best-known works (including THE LEGEND OF LEIGH BOWERY, HAIL THE NEW PURITAN, SUPERHONEY, and so on), as well as more rarely-screened pieces such as the various “MARTHA” TAPES, his early films MAYONNAISE, #1 (1972) and NEVADA (1974), his ad campaign for Calvin Klein, and his stereoscopic film TESSERACT 3D (2017), this survey demonstrates the embarrassment of riches contained within Atlas’s dizzyingly inventive and ever-morphing body of work.
“Collaboration is a major aspect of Atlas’s expansive practice. He has collaborated with important figures from the worlds of dance, art, performance, music and theater, including Michael Clark, Merce Cunningham, Leigh Bowery, John Kelly, Marina Abramovic, Anohni, Yvonne Rainer, Fennesz, New Humans (Mika Tajima and Howie Chen), Karole Armitage and Bill Irwin. For Atlas, the theatricality of dance and performance is a point of inquiry into artifice, fiction and reality. After first working in film, Atlas was a pioneer of videodance, collaborating on performance works created specifically for the two-dimensional space, intimate scale and temporality of video. His groundbreaking early works…evolved from a unique collaboration with Merce Cunningham, for whose dance company he was filmmaker-in-residence from 1975 to 1983. Since then, Atlas has worked on numerous international productions for television with choreographers, artists and musicians. In these extravagantly stylized ‘documentary fictions,’ Atlas manifests his fascination with what he terms ‘narrative, psychology, dance and flights of fantasy.’ Typified by a provocative, postmodern performance sensibility and an ironic urban insouciance, Atlas’s works transform performances into vivid time capsules of contemporary culture.” –ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX
Charles Atlas will be here in person for most if not all of the screenings!
Co-organized and co-presented by Electronic Arts Intermix; special thanks to Rebecca Cleman & Karl McCool.
Unless otherwise noted, all the individual film descriptions are from the Electronic Arts Intermix catalogue.
PROGRAM 1:
DISCO 2000 1990, 30 sec, video
One of a trio of works Atlas made to celebrate downtown New York nightlife at the beginning of the 1990s, DISCO 2000 mixes footage of a crowded dance floor, homemade optical effects, and a dancing chicken.
IT’S A JACKIE THING 1999, 29 min, video
“‘Jackie 60’ was a weekly party at the nightclub Mother, in New York’s Meatpacking District. I went faithfully, every Tuesday night, all through the 90s. I didn’t always bring a camera – I usually went just to have fun – but sometimes I shot the performances. […] When ‘Jackie 60’ ended in 1999, the promoters Chi Chi Valenti and Johnny Dynell asked me to contribute a video to show at the closing event. So, I edited together my footage, choosing the best moments. The result captures an era of brilliant drag performance.” –Charles Atlas
THE LEGEND OF LEIGH BOWERY 2002, 84 min, video. Music: Richard Torry, Minty.
In this documentary feature, Atlas examines the legend and the life of his friend and collaborator – artist, performer, fashion designer, model, and club promoter and icon Leigh Bowery. In a remarkable and brief period before his early death from AIDS-related illness in 1994, Bowery made an indelible mark on nightlife, fashion, and artmaking in London, New York, and beyond. Through a wealth of archival footage and frank and uncensored interviews with friends, family, and fellow artists, Atlas traces the extraordinary impact Bowery had on culture, recalling his infamous nightclub Taboo, his collaborations with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, his time as a muse to Lucien Freud, and his notorious, innovative, and influential fashions and performances. The result is a complex, candid portrait of a singular talent – and a legend.
Total running time: ca. 120 min.
Wed, May 8 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 2:
THE “MARTHA” TAPES, PART 10 1996-2000, 16 min, video
“Starting in 1997 I began to make found-footage montages for a once-a-month downtown NY performance club called ‘Martha @ Mother’. It was hosted by the performance artist Richard Move in his satirical impersonation of Martha Graham, the iconic 20th century modern dance choreographer. My videos presented a hyperactive mix of all kinds of dance styles ranging from the serious and minimal to the entertaining and irreverent – all sprinkled with comments about dance and call-outs to ‘Martha’ characters from Hollywood films.” –Charles Atlas
SSS 1989, 5.5 min, video. Made in collaboration with Marina Abramovic.
In this video portrait of Marina Abramovic, Abramovic delivers a monologue that traces a concise personal chronology. This brief narrative history, which references her past in former Yugoslavia, her performance work, and her collaboration with and separation from Ulay, is intercut with images of Abramovic engaged in symbolic gestures and ritual acts – scrubbing her feet, staring like Medusa as snakes writhe on her head. Closing her litany with the phrase “time past, time present,” Abramovic invokes the personal and the mythological in a poignant affirmation of self.
CALVIN KLEIN CAMPAIGN 2015, 8.5 min, digital
Two films made for the Calvin Klein 2015 Fall Campaign.
SON OF SAM AND DELILAH 1991, 27 min, video
“New York City 1988. Raging homophobia. A killer on the loose. Disco dancing till dawn. Performers struggle to survive. Delilah seduces Samson in song. Gender illusionists go shopping. Samson and Delilah, 1991. This tape is an entertaining amalgam of cross-cut scenes featuring New York performance luminaries including John Kelly, Hapi Phace, and DANCENOISE. It is a dark vision of an America where life is cheap and even the moments of tenderness have a life-threatening edge.” –Charles Atlas
BECAUSE WE MUST
1989, 52.5 min, video. Choreography: Michael Clark.
In BECAUSE WE MUST, Atlas continued his collaboration with British choreographer Michael Clark, the enfant terrible of the dance world in the 1980s. Based on an original stage production at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, this is an ironic, irreverent work that is as entertaining as it is provocative. The extravagant stylization and burlesque humor that pervade the choreography, costuming and staging are mirrored by Atlas’s focus on the theatricality of the performance and the artifice of the behind-the-scenes narrative. Clark thumbs his nose at the conventions of “serious” dance, composing outrageously unexpected and inventive scenarios that include a nude dancer wielding a chain-saw and a psychedelic interlude, all exquisitely, if ironically, performed.
Total running time: ca. 115 min.
Thurs, May 16 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 3:
THE “MARTHA” TAPES, PART 6 1996-2000, 14.5 min, video
[See the description for THE “MARTHA” TAPES in Program 2.]
FROM AN ISLAND SUMMER 1984, 13 min, 16mm-to-video. Choreography: Karole Armitage.
Atlas’s exuberantly hip homage to a specific time and place – New York, August 1983 – is a dance “home movie,” a quasi-documentary that follows choreographer Karole Armitage and her dancers along the boardwalk of Coney Island and through the streets of Times Square.
HAIL THE NEW PURITAN 1986, 85 min, 16mm-to-video. Choreography: Michael Clark; music: The Fall and Bruce Gilbert.
Exuberant and witty, HAIL THE NEW PURITAN is a simulated day-in-the-life “docufantasy” starring the British dance celebrity Michael Clark. Atlas’s fictive portrait of the charismatic choreographer serves as a vivid invocation of the studied decadence of the 1980s post-punk London subculture. Contriving a faux cinéma-vérité format in which to stage his stylized fiction, Atlas seamlessly integrates Clark’s extraordinary dance performances into the docu-narrative flow. Focusing on Clark’s flamboyantly postured eroticism and the artifice of his provocative balletic performances, Atlas posits the dance as a physical manifestation of Clark’s psychology. From the surreal opening dream sequence to the final solo dance, Clark’s milieu of fashion, clubs, and music signifies for Atlas “a time capsule of a certain period and context in London that’s now gone.”
Total running time: ca. 115 min.
Wed, May 22 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 4:
AS SEEN ON TV 1987, 25 min, video. Made in collaboration with Bill Irwin. Choreography: William Whitener and Diane Martel.
In AS SEEN ON TV, “new vaudevillian” performance artist Bill Irwin is the subject of a wryly comic performance narrative. Framed by the storyline of a parodic theatrical audition, Irwin plays a hapless Everyman who inadvertently becomes trapped inside a television set. Displaying an antic physical comedy that has been likened to a contemporary rendering of Chaplin’s Little Tramp, Irwin wanders, baffled, through the television space, caught in the flow of televised soap operas, commercials, sitcoms, and ballets.
EX-ROMANCE 1986, 48.5 min, 16mm-to-video. Choreography: Karole Armitage; music: Jeffrey Lohn.
Atlas’s fascination with “narrative, psychology, dance, and flights of fantasy,” is manifested in this dynamic videodance musical. Here the postmodern choreography of Karole Armitage is performed by Armitage, Michael Clark, and others, to American pop and Latin music. Framed and interrupted by the ironic observations of two parodic “public television” commentators, the dancers play fictionalized versions of themselves in a wry tale of contemporary romance, in which the dance literally and metaphorically advances the narrative. Atlas deftly stages elaborate dance sequences in unlikely settings – an airport lounge, a gas station, a baggage conveyor belt – that are presented alternately as fact and fantasy.
PARAFANGO 1984, 37.5 min, video. Choreography: Karole Armitage; music: David Linton.
Magnetic performances by Karole Armitage, Michael Clark, and Philippe Découflé are the focus of this French production, an intricate and quintessential Atlas pastiche of provocative dance, new music, pop design and costuming, narrative, documentary, and media references. The kinetically shot and edited dance segments are intercut with an ambiguous narrative involving the performers, TV news footage and other appropriated images, color bars and other formal video devices.
Total running time: ca. 115 min.
Sat, May 25 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 5:
JUMP (HYSTERIQUE BOURREÉ) 1984, 15 min (excerpt), video. Choreography: Philippe Découflé; music: Joseph Biscuit and The Residents.
Flaunting the burlesque theatricality of a surreal, post-punk cabaret, JUMP is a wildly stylized collaboration between Atlas and French choreographer Philippe Découflé. Within the campy, self-conscious decadence of a French music hall milieu, Découflé’s idiosyncratic, postmodern choreography is performed with elegant bravado.
BUTCHERS’ VOGUE 1990, 5 min, video. Choreography: Richard Move; music: Madonna.
Set in a New York Meat Market restaurant after hours, BUTCHERS’ VOGUE features a voguing waiter and waitress, two prostitutes on the run, and a cop.
DANCENOISE SCRAPS 2010, 10 min, video
A collage of clips made from footage shot in New York in collaboration with DANCENOISE in the 80s and 90s.
DANCENOISE IN A MUSEUM? 2018, 5 min, video
Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton invade the recently opened new home of the Whitney Museum in 2018.
LIFE’S A BEACH 2019, 3 min, video
“A short film vignette featuring Anne Iobst from the American feminist performance art duo DANCENOISE. Shaped by a 30-year collaborative relationship, the work was created spontaneously while Atlas and Iobst were at The Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Florida, goofing around in the studio.” –STUK
PUT BLOOD IN THE MUSIC
1989, 72 min, video
PUT BLOOD IN THE MUSIC is a unique documentary on the downtown New York music scene. In a collage of music, performance, and commentary, Atlas captures the energy and pluralism that characterize this urban milieu. Reflecting the eclecticism of his subject, Atlas re-structures the conventional “talking head” format to allow a fragmented, fast-paced compendium of voices and sounds, ranging from music critic John Rockwell of The New York Times to street musicians. Focusing on such influential downtown figures as John Zorn, and featuring performances by Zorn, Sonic Youth, Hugo Largo, and others, this is less a documentary than a cultural document, a vivid time capsule of the contemporary New York music scene, circa 1989.
Total running time: ca. 115 min.
Thurs, May 30 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 6:
THE “ MARTHA” TAPES, PART 8 1996-2000, 17.5 min, video
[See the description for THE “MARTHA” TAPES in Program 2.]
MAYONNAISE, #1 1972, 11 min, 16mm-to-digital
A portrait of dancer/choreographer Douglas Dunn inspired by Edouard Manet’s painting “Boy with Cherries”.
NEVADA 1974, 3 min, Super-8mm-to-digital“Dance, drawing and abstraction are incorporated into the film NEVADA, in which Douglas Dunn performs a series of movements with a board found randomly in the street and whose shape is reminiscent of the state of Nevada.” –Claire Staebler
SECRET OF THE WATERFALL 1983, 29 min, video. Choreography: Douglas Dunn.
The confluence of words and movement propels this multi-layered collaboration by Atlas, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and poets Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Dunn’s athletic choreography is performed to the rhythms, cadences, and associative meanings of the poets’ “cascade of words,” which function as music. Atlas introduces narrative references, ironically staging the dance in unexpected locations, including domestic interiors and vehicles.
OH, MISHA 1999, 12 min, video
“A video collage of filmed Baryshnikov ballet performances edited with feature film clips in which all the characters refer to someone named ‘Misha’.” –NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
GRAND DANCE OF JOLLY 3 2010, 2.5 min, digital“A remix of footage I shot in the early 70’s in preparation for my theater piece ‘Wonder, Try’ combined with the original D.W. Griffith footage of Lillian Gish that inspired it.” –Charles Atlas
RAINER VARIATIONS 2002, 40 min, video
Employing archival film clips and new video, Atlas’s self-described “video montage” is a documentary sous-rature. In his portrayal of filmmaker/choreographer Yvonne Rainer, Atlas undermines genre conventions to pose some of the same questions that have long concerned her. While an extended interview with Rainer runs throughout the piece, Atlas’s editing takes up the four “performers” (Rainer herself among them) who enact and re-enact the interview, shuffling and superimposing image and voice tracks to yield a video palimpsest of theatricality and ambiguity.
Total running time: ca. 120 min.
Wed, June 5 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 7:
THE “MARTHA” TAPES, PART 2 1996-2000, 20.5 min, video
[See the description for THE “MARTHA” TAPES in Program 2.]
MRS. PEANUT VISITS NY 1999, 6 min, video
In this video portrait of the legendary performance artist, fashion designer, and nightlife icon Leigh Bowery, Atlas’s camera follows Bowery as he flamboyantly strolls through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, outrageously costumed in a self-made reinterpretation of “Mr. Peanut,” the Planter’s Peanut mascot.
YOU ARE MY SISTER 2005, 4 min, video
Atlas’s video visualization of the song of the same name by the acclaimed Anohni and the Johnsons (previously known as Antony and the Johnsons). Anohni’s haunting anthem is paired with Atlas’s processed images of thirteen “NYC Beauties,” whose close-up portraits turn in hypnotic motion. These images were originally processed and projected live by Atlas for the performance piece TURNING, a collaboration with Anohni and the Johnsons that merged the artists’ distinctive and dramatic styles.
TURNING
2012, 78 min, video
“Originally staged at New York’s Whitney Biennial exhibition, TURNING is a stunning collaboration between Antony & The Johnsons and Charles Atlas. The evening’s premise is a simple one. As Antony Hegarty and his band perform, a parade of striking New York women [successively] mount a small revolving platform to the side of the stage. Atlas films them and beams the results – blurred and interwoven with external images – on to a giant screen behind the musicians. The concept sounds risibly pretentious but is breathtakingly effective. Hegarty’s gentle music invariably obsesses on themes of alienation, gender and sexual identity, and his melodramatic contralto, quavering and seemingly insatiable, chimes magnificently with Atlas’s stark visual reinventions of his handpicked ‘13 New York beauties’.” –VIENNALE.
This film is a mix of performance footage from the live show filmed on tour in London in 2006 mixed with interviews of the performers.
Total running time: ca. 115 min.
Tues, June 11 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 8:
INSTANT FAME NY & LONDON
2003-06, 70 min, digital
A selection of live video portraits made during the installation exhibitions in New York at Participant, Inc gallery in 2003 and in London at Vilma Gold Gallery in 2006.
TESSERACT 3D
2017, 43 min, digital. Made in collaboration with choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener; music: Christian Fennesz. This film will be projected in 3D with stereoscopic glasses provided.
“A six-chapter work of science fiction, TESSERACT 3D is Atlas’s first ‘dance video’ in over a decade. Filmed with a mobile camera rig that moves with the choreography, TESSERACT 3D traverses a series of hybrid and imagined worlds staged and filmed over a series of Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) production residencies. Each chapter combines a specific set, choreography, and camera motion to encompass pas de deux and ensemble pieces, choreographed and performed by former Merce Cunningham dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. Manipulating the 3D footage to combine live dance with animation, Atlas’s distinctive video effects reach into otherworldly dimensions beyond the stage.” –EMPAC
Total running time: ca. 120 min.
Sat, June 15 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 9:THE “MARTHA” TAPES, PART 7 1996-2000, 21 min, video
[See the description for THE “MARTHA” TAPES in Program 2.]
DRAGLINQUENTS 1990, 7 min, video
The performances of two 1990s NYC junior drag queens are superimposed over cliched images and intercut with 1950s muscle-boy movies. The video was shot in the “Make Your Own Video” studio at Macy’s department store.
THE MYTH OF MODERN DANCE 1990, 26 min, video. Choreographer/Performer: Douglas Dunn.Collaborating with choreographer Douglas Dunn, Atlas uses anthropological text, satirical movement, and vividly colored chroma-keyed backgrounds in an episodic, often humorous look at the evolution of modern dance.
SUPERHONEY 1994, 51 min, video. Choreography: Thomas Hejlesen; music: Sort Sol and David Linton.
In this futuristic danse macabre, Atlas creates a fully realized cyber-gothic world, rife with both erotic and physical danger. We follow our heroine on her travels through a world inhabited by libidinal robots, human profligates, statuesque hairdressers, and a bevy of other intriguing individuals. Her stylized and blank-faced nonchalance mirror the performative passion and violence which surrounds her. In SUPERHONEY Atlas unhinges his own well-developed aesthetic in order to more fully explore the interplay between ambivalence and pleasure.
Total running time: ca. 110 min.
Wed, June 19 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 10:THE “MARTHA” TAPES, PART 4 1996-2000, 23 min, video
[See the description for THE “MARTHA” TAPES in Program 2.]
MORE MEN
1982, 90 min, video
A double-screen video portrait of Atlas’s father and a host of fictional sons, featuring performers John Erdman, Michael Bloom, and Joseph Lennon.
Total running time: ca. 120 min.
Thurs, June 27 at 7:15.
