Charles Atlas: A Video Tribute to Merce Cunningham

Presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center

Award-winning filmmaker and video artist Charles Atlas will present a special video tribute featuring excerpts from noted films created with and about Merce Cunningham, as well as rarely-seen footage of the late modern dance icon and his company, including: Joints (1971), Fractions (1978), Channels/Inserts (1981), Melange (2000), Views on Video (2005), and Interscape (2008). 

Post-screening Q+A with Mr. Atlas.

BAC Flicks is a film and discussion series presented in partnership with La Cinémathèque de la Danse (Paris).

Charles Atlas has been active as a filmmaker and video artist since the 1970s. Over the years he has made pioneering media/dance works, multi-channel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video art works for television, and live electronic performances. He currently serves as a director for the Peabody Award winning PBS series ART 21: Art of the 21st Century.  Atlas worked as filmmaker-in-residence with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for ten years (1974-83). His film, Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance, a 90 minute international co-production for television won a “best documentary” award at Dance Screen 2000 in Monaco.  Atlas has made several video portraits of the late performance artist/fashion icon Leigh Bowery as well as the documentary feature The Legend of Leigh Bowery (2002) which had a theatrical release and is now in release on DVD.  Atlas has created several large-scale gallery installations which have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Aldrich Museum for Contemporary Art, CT; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Other installation and video work has been shown at galleries and museums in New York and throughout Europe and the US.  His most recent multi-channel video installation was Tornado Warning! shown at the Vilma Gold Gallery in London (November 2008).  Since 2003, Atlas has been interested in exploring different contexts that exploit the use of live video. Instant Fame (2003), shown at Participant, Inc. in New York and then remounted in London (2006) at the Vilma Gold Gallery, consisted of a series of real-time video portraits of performers and artists created live in the gallery space. He created the live video component for Turning, a collaboration with Antony and the Johnsons which premiered at St. Ann?s Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2004, and then toured in Europe in 2006. Most recently he collaborated with Mika Tajima/New Humans on Today is Not a Dress Rehearsal (2009), a 3 day continuous installation/performance presented at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Atlas has received three “Bessie” (New York Dance and Performance) Awards and was the 2006 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art?s biennial John Cage Award.