Tanz für Eine Frau

featured in the exhibition From the Inside: Performance, Screen and the Gallery Space

TANZ FÜR EINE FRAU
Ulrike Rosenbach
8’32”
1975

The artist as dancer, turning incessantly around to an old waltz-tune: ‘I dance with you into heaven’. The action is filmed from above and visualises thus the seemingly faceless centre of a spinning voile skirt. The tune is constantly repeated, reflecting the endless turnings of the dance.  The image is both dizzy and unsettling. The figure appears from above like the turning ballerina of a music box, gentling swaying to and fro in the frame of the screen, only to balance itself out again in the centre. The dancing woman resembles the core but, in this form, causes fright. She turns into a record stuck to the turntable of habit and role-playing.  The togetherness suggested by the tune is missing completely. The artist paraphrases the title of the waltz by relating it solely to herself. At the end of the tape she breaks down. (Attribution: Petra Heck and Jennifer Steetskamp, Moving Images/Moving Bodies catalogue; Netherlands Media Art Institute and CAPTURE)


EXHIBITION

From The Inside…performance, screen and the gallery space
Rugyby Art Gallery and Museum
31 Aug 2010 – 31 Oct 2010


VIDEO

Video from Exhibition