Charles Atlas
Charles Atlas, The Grand Dance of the Jolly Three (1973/2010). Courtesy Champ Lacombe Biarritz/London & Luhring Augustine New York © the artist.
In 1974, Charles Atlas had only just become choreographer Merce Cunningham’s filmmaker-in-residence when he visited dancer Douglas Dunn in his Broadway loft. Atlas set his Super 8 on a tripod, trained it on the floor, and marked out its frame of reference. Dunn’s feet appear at the very edges of the frame while the centre remains empty. He ends the film—the nearly four-minute-long Floor—sprawled face down across the frame’s centre. While the film’s interest in fragmentation is an expression of Cunningham’s radical approach to dance, Floor also speaks to Atlas’ mischievous brilliance.
A movie obsessive with no formal training, Atlas was working as Cunningham’s assistant stage manager when he showed the choreographer his filmic experiments. These films—among 15 works dating from 1970–2010 currently showing at Champ Lacombe, London—signal the beginning of more than 50 years of radical innovation at the intersection of film, performance and media.
Read full interview at ocula.com.