Helene Posted April 19, 2009 Share Posted April 19, 2009 From the release: Quay Brothers’ Dance Films Monday, April 20 at 7:00 pm Coolidge Corner Theatre 290 Harvard Street, Brookline As part of its month-long retrospective screenings of the phenomenal work by the Quay Brothers, two of the world’s most original filmmakers and this year’s Coolidge Award recipients, the Coolidge Corner Theatre presents a selection of shorts unavailable elsewhere. The program includes two exquisite dance films rarely seen in this country: The Sandman Based upon by E. T. A. Hoffmann's story, "The Sand-Man" and the music of Janáček and Kurtág, the Brothers along with choreographer Will Tuckett, create a dreamlike experience betraying our impression of familiar objects. This haunting piece, which starts at the deathbed of Hoffmann himself, draws together dance, music, and film, magically blurring the boundaries between real and imaginary, visible and invisible. The transcendent ballerina Zenaida Yanowsky embodies our deepest emotions. (2001, 43 minutes) Duet A film about dance, created around the music of Arvo Pärt, with choreography by Will Tuckett. Ethereal performances by Adam Cooper and Zenaida Yanowsky, principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, set in the Quays’ vision of evocative space. (2000, 18 minutes) This program will also feature a selection of the Quay Brothers’ television commercials. Tickers available in advance at www.coolidge.org or at the Coolidge box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. For more information about the Coolidge Award, to be celebrated May 6-7, please visit www.coolidge.org/award. The Quay Brothers on dance: “We are not dancers; we are not trained in any way. What we like is the way the camera can become a subjective other character. It's by watching dance that you realize that a world can be expressed through gesture, décor (like the silent cinema), music, or a look. You have to read, to interpret, the ballet – since there's no dialogue – and that fascinates us. The way a choreographer deals with abstract space is very exciting. There is a lot to learn from that. "How do (dancers) know where their body is in space and what it's doing? What are they feeling inside them? This is different from the actor, who is half the time working with his brain, thinking about the role. Dancers really are a unique species. They can't come out of their bodies and watch what their bodies are doing in terms of space, décor, music, because they're attached to the whole picture. The picture is inside them, like a secret inner picture. And musicians have that too. … "Ultimately, the work we want to go for is like music. You just have to sense it, you don't have to think it too much. You just have to sense it and just go with it because it will take you on a great journey and a very moving one”. " - The Quay Brothers, Senses of Cinema, 2001 Link to comment
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