Études

Inspired by Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles”, Études is a stop motion dance video about a person trying to find her own routine in an unknown and hostile environment, using the techniques of repetition, engraving, adaptation and transformation. Visually influenced by the GIF culture, Études borrow their name from the homonymous musical compositions that were designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular skill. Respectively, the brief sequences of the dancer’s movements can be seen as preparation exercises or parts of made-up (war) rituals that keep her warm in anticipation of potential attack.

Evi Stamou and Pietro Radin have collaborated in Evi Stamou’s films since 2013 and they work as a duo of film and video-art curators since 2018. Études is the first video they co-directed. 

Music

The music of Études was created for the film by the Greek composer Giorgos Hatzimichelakis. The music followed the visual rhythm of the film, and only a few changes were made in film’s final cut, after the music track was applied. For a few seconds, in the beginning as well as in the end of the film, a small extract from Études by Carl Czerny – played and recorded by a music student – can be heard: it is a playful way to keep the spirit of the title. In between, original music that combines contemporary and classic elements, with the flute as the lead instrument, is accompanying the image.

Making

“Études” was created in the frame of a residency organized by LatoMeio Project in the arcadian mountains of Peloponnese in Greece.  Inspired by the surrounding landscape (most of the residency took place in an abandoned quarry) we created four short choreographies, four small exercises to give the opportunity to the dancer, the directors and the post production team to try out new techniques. In keeping with the residency’s theme, which had an underlying sci-fi tinge, the art direction and styling of the main character are indebted to 80s science fiction movies and their sandy dystopias.

The camera moved freely around the dancer taking high quality photos in order to create a stop motion video. Our aim was to isolate the elements of the choreography (the movements and the gestures), so we used still photography instead of video. Working with the photographic medium we were able to apply a very high shutter speed (so as to avoid motion blur) and to obtain a very high resolution (in order to isolate smallest portions of the frame without losing quality).  We shot roughly 4,000 photos: in the first and the fourth etude you can see the sequences of photos exactly as they were taken (at least in the first iteration of the choreography), whereas in the second and third etude separate gestures and dance figures were isolated from the original choreography, then repeated and recombined in many different sequences, so that each dance movement would take on a different meaning in every new context.