What connects run-down pubs, woodlands and remote meadows, private living rooms, frozen rivers and functional class rooms? They are all dance floors, as long as you behold them with the eyes of the British artist Miranda Pennell. Rhythm is to be found everywhere and choreography doesn’t seem to be tied to specific places and situations. Thus even a spontaneous domestic quarrel becomes an expressive dance duel in the vibrantly coloured living room, and exercising soldiers are drawn into the maelstrom of a (apparently or actually) thoroughly composed mass-choreography.
Pennell’s special approach to these movements and the discovery of choreography in every day situations often reveals astonishing moments and, then and again, inspires a smile. It is an exceptional kind of dance film: the people who move in the pictures aren’t forced into a perfectly arranged choreography; the object isn’t dance in the studio, on the stage or in a musical. Pennel’s films and videos look at rituals and performance in every day life.
With her compositions of images Miranda Pennell, originally educated in New York and Amsterdam as a dancer, doesn’t merely create a dance in pictures, but also dance with pictures – from emotional situations to tranquil moments that manage to contrast the movement. Pennell’s main objective is always the relationship between (dance-like) movement, the surroundings and sound. Her films often found their way onto the screens of festivals and received awards world wide (most recently 2008 in Rotterdam). In 2006 the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen dedicated a “Profile”-Programme to her. Furthermore her works are increasingly shown within the context of art – e.g. in galleries and exhibitions. Miranda Pennell lives and works in London.
Text: VIS / Wiktoria Pelzer, translation: Angharad Gabriel - 2010.