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Charles Atlas 查爾斯．阿特拉斯
Merce Cunningham 摩斯．康寧漢
Walkaround Time 漫步時光
1973
In Walkaround Time, filmmaker Charles Atlas documents a multimedia collaboration among some of the giants of New York’s post-war artistic scene. Its focus is a dance work of the same title by avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham, intended as an homage to the influential Conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp. The dancers’ movements echo the abstract, almost mechanical quality of Duchamp’s artwork, while the mobile, transparent set (by artist Jasper Johns) is inspired directly by Duchamp’s famous 1923 work La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même, also known as The Large Glass. Atlas filmed the dance company during both a rehearsal and a live performance of Walkaround Time, using handheld cameras onstage and fixed cameras in the theatre. Designed to be projected simultaneously on side-by-side screens, these two perspectives were meant to bring the viewer closer to the visceral experience of dance.
Cunningham and Atlas developed an approach they called ‘media dance’, where the camera became an active part of the choreography and the audience’s experience alongside the dancers themselves. Atlas left the dance company in the early 1980s and went on to make independent films exploring the intersections between dance, art, and urban subcultures; Cunningham continued to choreograph and lead the company until his death in 2009.
Cunningham and Atlas developed an approach they called ‘media dance’, where the camera became an active part of the choreography and the audience’s experience alongside the dancers themselves. Atlas left the dance company in the early 1980s and went on to make independent films exploring the intersections between dance, art, and urban subcultures; Cunningham continued to choreograph and lead the company until his death in 2009.
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