Evidentia is a dance film conceived by Sylvie Guillem, who is probably the most famous prima ballerina in the world today. It takes the form of five short works, by assorted choreographers and film-makers, exploring what I suppose could be called the cutting-edge of dance today.
Unfortunately, much of it comes across not so much cutting-edge as repetitive and pseudish. There are some passages of very good dancing, but the entire package is wrapped in a lot of pretentious tinsel.
The most successful segments are Smoke, choreographed and directed by Mats Ek and performed by Sylvie Guillem and Niklas Ek to mousic by Arvo Part, and Movement, performed by David Kern and Benedicte Loyen and directed by Francoise Ha Van.
I was impressed for a time by the closing piece In the Wind, There is Someone until I realised that the sections which were giving me the greatest pleasure were in fact clips from two classic movies of the 1930s, Jean Vigo's Zero Conduite (the precursor to Lindsay Anderson's If and Leni Riefenstahl's documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Olympia. At least post-modernism lets us glimpse the past sometimes!
Each of these short works are topped-and-tailed by black-and-white images of Sylvie in a classic black tutu moving in angular style across a fabulous set which looks like an expressionist's view of the end of the world. Her lean legs are pure sinewy muscle - there's no glamour here, just an image of the finely-tuned athlete.
Sylvie Guillem has visited Australia twice in the past three years, and has a huge following here. This may be enough to entice many fans to buy this disc, and her presence will be justification enough for them.
For the more casual follower of dance or ballet, this may be verging just a bit too close to the avant-garde precipice.
