blue/yellow

“One sees, or rather perceives Sylvie Guillem through an open door. Seeing and imagining become complementary activities. Very beautiful and very strong”. (“On y voit, ou plutôt on y aperçoit Sylvie Guillem dansant à travers l’ouverture d’une porte. Voir et imaginer deviennent deux attitudes complices. C’est très beau et très fort”). Le Nouvel Observateur, France 21.12.95

“...blue yellow... shot through a half opened door in a game of infinitely many framings. A beautiful work that does not confine itself to showing the body but also examines something that has always remained unthought of: that is, the relationship between dance and its televising”. (“... blue yellow... est ainsi filmée par l’entrebâillemnet d’une porte dans un jeu de cadrages infini. Du beau travail qui ne se contente pas d’enregistrer les corps, mais ausculte également ce qui resta longtemps du domaine de l’impensé: à savoir les rapport entre la danse et sa télévision”). Liberation, France 29.12.95

Sylvie Guillem, the celebrated ballerina, asked Jonathan Burrows and I to make a dance film (she had seen our previous film very). The film was to be included in a prime time carte blanche called Evidentia, funded by BBC 2 and France 2.

The film is called blue/yellow after Mattisse’s painting Intérieur jaune et bleu, of 1946. This colour scheme inspired my design and much of the pictorial composition, such as the use of an opening to frame a vista - a regular strategy for Matisse.

Moreover, being neither a dancer nor a choreographer, I had felt rather removed from the choreographic process, and so such a distancing of the dance, by filming through a doorway, would serve to reflect feelings of longing and alienation into the very fabric of the image.

I also wanted to consolidate ideas I had first explored in my film very, where I had made overt the fragmentary nature of my subjective experience of a dancer, inserting ellipses and discontinuities in the editing that reflected my inattention and failures of vision.

The aim was to make it a task for a viewer of a dance film to imagine the space, and the continuity of movement – so that the dance, if it exists at all, exists as held in the mind of the viewer.

The filming took two days, and the editing about a week. Kevin Volans suggested using a section of one of his string quartets which we cut up and interspersed through the film. At first we laid out the sections at regular intervals, but, as with all editing, human judgement finds some coincidences more pleasing than others. Hugh Strain at De Lane Lea sound studios achieved a perfect sound mix, foregrounding the music, as if it were, “this side” of the door.

In broad terms, the film seeks, by means of patterning and rhythm, to maintain interest in what is glimpsed through a door. Sometimes it pauses long enough to emphasise longing. All movemnet demands to be fulfilled and uninterupted; yet film is fated to work against that need.

dancer:  Sylvie Guillem

choreography:  Jonathan Burrows

film lighting:  Jack Hazan

producers : B en Woolford / Isabelle Dupont

music:  Kevin Volans / Smith Quartet

design/director/camera/editing:  Adam Roberts

BBC2 screening:  BBC TV 28.12.95

DVD distribution Warner Music Entertainment