FROZEN IN TIME: PHOTOGRAPHS OF DANCE (art, main, Ntsikana Gallery until July 5).
Reviewed by Leon Muston, Arts Editor (Exclusive review not in print edition)
THIS photographic exhibition, which probably should have been hung in a smaller venue, as it doesn’t really fill the space provided, looks at how different photographers have taken vastly different approaches to essentially the same theme.
Andrea Esswein’s photos, which are the first you see as you walk in the door, are rather static – around nine photos of the same dancer, always with his feet together, merely making different hand movements.
By contrast Dominik Mentzos’s work is full of movement – albeit rather strange. The photos are from a four-hour installation in which dancers were challenged to write extracts from the Universal Declaration of Human Independence, using only lumps of coal and limited movements. As a result we have strange close ups of people trying to write with their hands and feet, while dancing at the same time.
Agnes Noltenius’s photos focus on “the architecture of movement” – close-ups on body parts like elbows and knees, while Bernd Uhlig has purposefully out of focus pictures of a woman dancing “The Dying Swan”, apparently to better capture her movement.
But possibly the strangest is Gert Welgelt’s photographs. A woman starts off with only her feet showing under a blanket which is covered in an ancient form of writing.
As the sequence progresses she wriggles, writhes and moves until the blanket is completely removed and she is revealed to be naked.
I’m not sure what dance enthusiasts will make of the exhibition, but it certainly is artistic.
Tags: dance, fine art review, photography
