Project Detail

52 Portraits

Synopsis

'52 Portraits' is an epic love song written to an art form. Dance.
'52 Portraits' is a series of moving image portraits of dancers accompanied by sung autobiographies. It captures the profound, funny and surprising power of their subjects, revealing the stories, thoughts and struggles of dancers in an unexpected way.
Conceived by choreographer Jonathan Burrows, composer Matteo Fargion and video maker Hugo Glendinning. The idea behind the project was to catch both the individual and unexpected brilliance of individual performers, but also the larger collective concerns of dance artists, which accumulate over the course of the 52 films. Originally conceived as a digital project, it began with ideas of the familiar; the common; the shared technological situation. These short gestural portraits were released online every week over a year. These videos now form the chapters of this film.
What emerges in this film is a political and sociological gesture, interrogating the numerous ways artists are subject to hierarchies, stereotypes and marginalisation of any kind. The result is a hugely varied and personal story of what it means to be a dancer.

Details

Year
2017
Type of project
Features
Running time
114 mins
Format
DCP
Director
Hugo Glendinning, Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion 1st Feature
Producer
Sadler’s Wells
Executive Producer
Sadler’s Wells
Editor
Hugo Glendinning
Director of Photography
Hugo Glendinning
Sound
Matteo Fargion
Composer
Matteo Fargion
Principal cast
Kwame Asafo-Adjei Flora Wellesley Wesley Hetain Patel Betsy Gregory Robert Cohan Antonio de la Fe Gillie Kleiman Tim Etchells Vicki Igbokwe Stefan Jovanovi Marquez&Zangs Marianna Emma Siobhan Davies Kloe Dean Namron Yarrum Eleanor Sikorski Botis Seva
Songs Performed by
Matteo Fargion, Francesca Fargion
Film Images
© Hugo Glendinning

Production Status

Production Company

Hugo Glendinning

4 Blackbird Yard
Ravenscroft Street
London
E2 7RP

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Rosebery Avenue
London
EC1R 4TN

Sales Company

Hugo Glendinning

4 Blackbird Yard
Ravenscroft Street
London
E2 7RP

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Rosebery Avenue
London
EC1R 4TN

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