Lapped, Translated Lines (2010)

Choreographer Rosemary Butcher got her start experimenting at the Judson Church, New York City crucible of post-modern dance, and in the three decades since has created performances that transform everyday movements into intense, arresting forms. Butcher approached Martin to make a film of her recent piece, Lapped, Translated Lines, which was born of discussions with dancer Elena Giannotti about Darwin's writings on animal morphology. Suggestive of a beast vigilantly traversing its territory, and secondarily of Butchers' restless memories of her New York history, the dance called for a similarly doubled physical and ephemeral manifestation. Butcher wanted to project Martin's commissioned film alongside the live performance, creating a hybrid that would span physical action and psychological presence. Martin, curious whether she could carve into the space of the tightly compact, almost caged, choreography, chose to emphasise the camera's mediation: masked by a gridded structure, or tied to the dancer's body, swimming through the air at the end of a stick, or functioning like a magnifying glass, the camera reveals viewpoints that an audience member, sitting on a set of bleachers, would not otherwise access. In order to balance the film's presence with that of the live performer, Butcher pared-down Giannotti's onstage movements to the point where they slowed or sometimes even stopped to take on the form of a seated figure who watched the film along with the audience. The installation was completed by Post-Works' snaking metallic form, evoking a landscape or a piece of frozen dance notation, and by Cathy Lane's soundscape, composed, in part, of Butcher's recordings made in New York.