Tag: dance floor

Exhibition on Screen:
John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 15 April 2024
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John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger
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Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

Late nineteenth century society portrait painter John Singer Sargent was fascinated more by their clothing and the possibilities of paint than he was by the women he painted – documentary is out in UK cinemas for selected screenings from Tuesday, April 16th

Based on the exhibition first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) and now at Tate Britain, this opens with incidental music that conjures a contemporary dance floor, a soundtrack which provokes a strange tension with paintings hanging on walls and costumes displayed in glass cases as the camera moves through the physical spaces in which they are displayed. But then, the title suggests this might be a little different from Exhibition on Screen’s usual fare.

John Singer Sargent’s A Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer (A Lady In White), 1889-90, shows the energy and intensity of his portraiture. The brushstrokes are arresting and like nothing else being done at the time. The paintings might be perfect, but the people within them most definitely are not: Sargent captures their imperfections in a most compelling way. He looked deeply at people, and some of his sitters were afraid to sit for him because of what he might see.… Read the rest

Tags 1882, A Lady In White, actors on a stage, Alice Brisbane, Alice Comyns Carr, Alice In Wonderland, Aline de Rothschild, art student, artist, beetle wing dress, Boston, Boston Public Library, brushstroke, camp, Carmen Dauset Moreno, Carmencita, Carnation Lily Lily Rose, Carolus-Duran, cataloguer, Chelsea, chemical dyes, Chinese lanterns, city, colour, costume designer, costumes, dance floor, dancer, dancers, dark space, David Bickerstaff, David Rocksavage, diet Coke, drama, dress straps, Edward Darley Boit, Ellen Terry, Elsie Palmer, Erica E. Hirschler, Europe, exhibition, Exhibition On Screen, fabric, fashion, fire, flamenco El Jaleo, Florence, Frances Fowle, Franz Hals, Gassed, Give Women the Vote, glass cases, Grand Manner portraiture, grandmother, green white and violet, Grenada, guitar players, GWV, Helena Bonham Carter, Henry James, Houghton Hall, Imperial War Museum, James Hayes, John Singer Sargent, Joshua Reynolds, Kate Moss, Kenwood, Lady Macbeth, Lady Sassoon, light, Lisa Stansfield, London, Louise Cooling, Madame Pierre Gautreau, Madame X, Madrid, Mark C. O’Flaherty, Mary Frances Grant, MFA, Miss Haversham, MoMA, Monet, Monty Python, Mrs Hugh Hammersley, Mrs. Charles Thursby, murals, muscles, Museum of Fine Arts, Mustard Gas, neck, New York, Norfolk, nouveau riche, nude, off the shoulder, opera cloak, Oscar Wilde, outer space, paint, painting imperfection, Paris, Paul Fisher, photographer, plain air, portraiture, pose, powerful, Queen of Hearts, queer, queer artist, queer circle, Richard Ormond, Rose Rocksavage, Sandy Powell, Siouxsie Sioux, sitting, society women, Stephanie L. Herdrich, Stephen Farthing, studio, Sybil Sassoon, Tate Britain, texture, the Lyceum, Thomas Edison, Thomas Gainsborough, Tilda Swinton, Tim Walker, Tite Street, torsion, twist, UK, Velázquez, Virginie Amélie Avegno, W. Graham Robertson, watercolour, Whistler, William Blake, women’s suffrage

Features Live Action Movies

House Of Gucci

Director – Ridley Scott – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 157m

*****

A woman marries into the wealthy Gucci family and inadvertently brings about its downfall – out in cinemas on Friday, November 26th

First impressions.

A beautiful day. A well-dressed man (Adam Driver) relaxes at the café, pays his bill, cycles through the streets. Life is good. He reaches his destination. As he approaches the door, a voice asks, “Mr. Gucci?”

Milan, 1978. Another beautiful day. A woman dressed and moving like a goddess (Lady Gaga) walks past trucks and workers to her father’s transportation business office where she works as his assistant. Later, a friend asks her to a costume party. She dances. She looks incredible. She goes for a drink. The barman (Driver) turns out not to be not the barman. He makes her a drink anyway. He’s Maurizio. Gucci. He knows the host. She’s Patrizia Reggiani. She doesn’t. He tells her he can’t dance. She drags him onto the dance floor and makes him look good even though he does nothing. He leaves at midnight, worried he’ll turn into a frog. It’s a pumpkin, she calls after him.

She stalks him, ‘accidentally’ bumping into him at a bookshop where he’s buying armfuls of legal books (he’s studying to be a lawyer).… Read the rest

Dance Features Live Action Movies

Climax

Director – Gaspar Noé – 2018 – France – Cert. 18 – 97m

*****

Uppers and downers – either way blood flows. Arthouse enfant terrible Noé combines technical skill and singular focus with some of the most spectacular dancing ever put on film to produce a dark and challenging vision of hell on earth – now available on VoD

Cinema at its purest. Bright white on a screen. A woman starts crawling from the top of the screen. Extreme audience disorientation. We realise she’s crawling through snow. She appears to be in a bad way. Traces of blood. The camera follows her forward movement down the screen. Slowly a tree comes into shot from the bottom. We are watching the same overhead camera movement.

A series of vox pops on a television screen with shelves of books on one side and piles of DVDs on the other. Dancers answer questions on why dance is important to them. Would they do anything in order to make it big? What would they do if they weren’t able to dance?

Then the narrative proper begins. It’s 1996. We’re inside a building with a dance floor watching the most amazing dance routines we’ve ever seen.… Read the rest