The friction and fusion of art forms.

The above image issues from my current experiments with moving and still images inspired
 by the painter Edgar Degas' interest in photography and film.

In the thesis on Dance on Screen as hybrid art, I reflect on various aesthetic forms through which time is perceived, treated and experienced. I follow the evolution of art forms, and the emergence of new concepts and portrayals of time, which usually coincide with the development and production of new technologies. The tension and creativity involved in the merging of different forms and technologies, or their conceptual influence on each other, is discussed, for example, in the relationship between choreography and film. 

 I refer to the film-maker David Hinton's "Notes on Dance and Film" (IMZ Dance Screen 99) where he states that 'Making a dance and making a film are the same kind of enterprise: giving structure to action'. Furthermore, Hinton suggests that if we view film as a formal language, it is 'surely a choreographic language'. He explains that dance doesn't need film as it exists as an independent language in its own right. Dance is primarily a theatrical language with its own methods of relating to rhythms and structures. 'The danger is that the structures and rhythms of film will simply confuse the structures and rhythms of dance'. Hinton's vision of the future of dance on screen is still very relevant and inspiring:

'Eventually, there will be a non-theatrical, cinematic style of dancing which will be accepted just as casually as we now accept a non-theatrical, cinematic style of acting. There will be a choreographic language designed for the film frame rather than the theatre space, and thought out according to the rhythms of editing. When this happens, making the dance and making the film will become one and the same thing: a single rhythm and a single structure' (Ibid.).