The Intimacy of Dance at the Biennale Captured in Photographic Series
Indigo Lewin, Artist In Residence for the Biennale Danza 2021, was invited to document First Sense, Wayne McGregor’s debut festival as Director of the Biennale Danza.
Indigo Lewin, Artist In Residence for the Biennale Danza 2021, was invited to document First Sense, Wayne McGregor’s debut festival as Director of the Biennale Danza.
Wayne McGregor CBE has been innovating the art of dance for well over thirty years, choreographing routines for fashion shoots including with Gareth Pugh, Nick Knight, and rising designer Fredrik Tjærandsen's inflatable bubbles, in addition to being a leading figure across theatre, opera, film and music. Resident choreographer at The Royal Ballet, McGregor is also the Director of Dance for the Venice Biennale Danza until 2024. Indigo Lewin, Artist In Residence for the Biennale Danza 2021, documented a cohort of dancers rehearsing for a performance choreographed by McGregor, highlighting the essential nature of human touch.
Twisting, bending dancers' bodies; an arched foot dusted in chalk; sweaty torsos; skin-on skin contact. These are all elements which make up Lewin's touching and intimate series of photographs of the dancers for McGregor's First Sense festival as they take moments for themselves backstage. Through the London photographer's lens, the viewer feels the electricity of human touch; the very fragility of human nature and the yearning we have for intimate connection.
'Lewin, a bright light in a new generation of radical photographers has always had bodies at the centre of her practice. In this installation, she reframes the traditional dance photography landscape and focuses in to the prosaic, the everyday, exposing and illuminating the modern rituals of the dancer and the dance in their raw vulnerability and ecstatic release,' McGregor said in a statement.
Taking place in Venice as one of the city's most important annual cultural events, the Biennale Danza will run for 10 days this July, including performances and events by soloists and international companies, together with training projects by the Biennale College Danza.
Lewin's fifty-piece body of photographic work, Indigo Lewin: Artist in Residence 21, will be shown to the public at the Sale d’Armi A in the Arsenale from 22-31 July 2022. The series includes dancers from Company Wayne McGregor, Oona Doherty, French dance collective (La)Horde and the Biennale College Danza.
