project. Beautiful City - Dnation visual dept
about. An experimental dance film + live show that looks at urbanisation through contemporary dance and multimedia.
role. Director / Producer
link. clip 1 clip 2 clip 3 / www.beautifulcity.co.nz
notes.
Beautiful City started as an idea after working on Lost Property and was influenced by my experience of being part of Throw Disposable Choeragraphy's Certainty project. I had been looking for sometime for a way to intergrate nature and mans obession with cities. A filming session on the Desert Road (while on tour with Lost Propery) gave me the inspiration and visual back-bone for the clash of realitys to begin. The city location was to be a car park - setting up reality-clash of the sterile concerete cube vs evolving formlessnes of the desert road footage.

This project fluidly evolved over 2008-6 from an experimental dance-video work to a live dance theatre work with multimedia. Once the short film was done it was inevitable to me that the live version was next. I had cut the footage in such a VJ friendly style that it was easy to see where to take the visual narrative next.

Beautiful City was always intended as a multi format work. The original idea came while living in London around 2001, it wanted to do a photo essay looking at the city as a magnet for humans and our drive together en-mass towards the future. What makes a city beautilful when it is place of such frentic energy and random chaos? How do you express that in imagery and movement?

A live version using multiple projection screens involving 4 dancers, live music, and visuals was developed for the Interdigitate festival in May 2006. The show was then developed and performed in September - October at Bats in Wellington, Dunedin Fringe Festival and Auckland's Tempo Festival of Dance.

Thanks to all the dancers, musicians, crew, friends and family that made the film and live show possible.