Private Dancer
Reviews of Private Dancer installed at Old Gold Exhibitions and Events in 2008:
New City:
RECOMMENDED
Selina Trepp is keenly interested in presence, from our presence in the vast world around us to how we are present with art and the viewing experience before us; from awareness of the moment art is made to the fleeting moment in which it exists to each of us individually. Trepp’s fractured, wondrous and borderless visions have been seen from Switzerland to Chicago, and are currently on exhibit at Old Gold in “Private Dancer,” a collaboration with intuitive dancer Ayako Kato, in which Kato is filmed interpreting the once-popular Tina Turner song of the same name. The filmed dance is then projected against a disco ball, reflected and deconstructed into tiny pieces of light thrown about the room in a slow-turning and broken dance of their own, glimpses of body parts touching every surface of the room, defying gravity in ways that dancers can only dream. The hypnotic performance puts us in mind of where we are and how we fit in that space, as spectator or as part of the performance, dancers ourselves, pirouetting in time with the projected images of Kato as we follow them from floor to ceiling to wall and back again. Trepp’s immersive kaleidoscope allows you to lose yourself in sound and movement, possibly even forgetting that you are in a specific place seeing a specific show at all. Simply existing within the moment, with upsurging self-awareness, becomes the art itself. (Damien James)
Flavorpill:
Selina Trepp invited dancer Ayako Kato to respond to Tina Turner's plaintive ballad "Private Dancer" for her latest collaboration. In Old Gold's basement gallery, a video of Kato's performance is projected onto a broken disco ball spinning on the floor, which sends elusive image fragments swirling around the darkened room. At heart a reflection on power dynamics, the project's effect grows in the empty, weathered space, producing a tender, haunted feeling of diffused life. Kato dances to the song in her head and a hushed silence prevails, broken only by the sound of shuffling feet. Meanwhile, surrounded by a mirrorball explosion, we're nudged to find the one crouched position where we may glimpse the dancer's body as a whole.
– Karsten Lund