The Indexical Dance-a-Thon!, 2016

A mediated lexicon of how to shoot dance. Remixing her archive of 16mm film and years of shooting dance, Siebens creates a personal manifesto using film, collage, text and projection. Yvonne Rainer’s infamous ‘NO Manifesto’ is re-written, and William Forsythe’s alphabet of movement is referenced through 26 channels of media and alphabetized collage.

Featuring Key Dancer/Choreographers
Cora Bos-Kroese, Justine A. Chambers, Kevin Cregan, Jane Ellison, James Gnam, Amy Raymond

Music Metamorphosis II by Philip Glass, performed by Lisa Moore

4 minutes 10 seconds long

Siebens uses cinematic cues and remembered movement gestures to create her signature shooting style, using the camera as an extension of her own moving body. The Indexical Dance-a-Thon projection is an emotional, messy montage, using visual phasing to jump cut across time and individual dancers. Shot in such seminal dance environments as Ballett Frankfurt in Germany and The Western Front in Canada, the 16mm fragments mix professional and amateur dancers, probing their gaze and the search for the sublime through simple improvisational gestures. Alphabet Index, 26 photographic collages of body imagery in negative and positive space, employs text fragments of dance, film and art terms to reveal the artist’s embedded canon of influence. For Siebens, the archive exists not only in her formidable media library – she has shot Lucinda Childs, Baryshnikov, Bill T. Jones, Justine A. Chambers and Jane Ellison – but also in the physical traces of film and video technology, old and new. To dance is a complex technological act.

SCREENINGS + EXHIBITIONS

MOVIMIENTO EN MOVIENTO Mexico City, Mexico October 2019

SCREENDANCE FESIVAL Stockholm, Sweden
April 2019

SAN SOUCI FESTIVAL OF DANCE CINEMA
Boulder, USA
2019

SEYR FESTIVAL
Teyran, Iran
May 2018

LIGHT MOVES FESTIVAL OF SCREENDANCE
Limerick, Ireland
November 2017

CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY AUCTION
Vancouver, Canada
November 2017

SAN FRANCISCO DANCE FILM FESTIVAL
San Francisco, USA
October 2017

NORTHWEST SCREENDANCE EXPOSITION
Eugene, Oregon, USA
October 2017

40 NORTH DANCE FILM FESTIVAL
San Diego, USA
September 2017

dance:made in canada festival
curated by Kathleen Smith
Toronto, Canada
August 2017

CAPITOL DANCE & CINEMA FESTIVAL
Washington, DC, USA
August 2017

CASCADIA DANCE & CINEMA FESTIVAL
Vancouver, Canada
July 2017

PERTH SCREENDANCE AWARDS
Perth, Scotland
June 2017

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Dance on Camera Festival
Experimental Shorts Program
New York, New York
February 2017

XXV
Access Art Auction
Vancouver, Canada
November 2016

WESTERN FRONT
Translating the Archive
Movement Arts
Vancouver, Canada
October 2016

WAAP – WIL ABALLE ART PROJECTS
Solo Exhibit
Vancouver, Canada
February 2016

WRITING + PRESS

THE INDEXICAL, ALPHABETIZED, MEDIATED, ARCHIVAL DANCE-A-THON!
Artist Book by Evann Siebens ISBN978-1-949734-02-7
Published by WAAP in 2019

THE DANCE CURRENT
By Brynn McNab
September/October 2016

THE VANCOUVER SUN
Art This Week Pick
February 24, 2016

PREVIEW
by Michael Turner
February/March 2016

PERFORMANCE, PLACE and POLITICS
Review by Peter Dickinson
March 20, 2016

CANADIAN ART
Must-Sees March 17, 2017

AN EXACT VERTIGO
Co-writing criticism led by Brynn McNab
March 19, 2016

RISOGRAPH PUBLICATION
Abstract written by Sunshine Frere