Movement was the first in a series of screenings and conversations curated by Marina Abramović on the occasion of her exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery.
This series of screenings and conversations brought together works by Marina Abramović, documentary footage, films selected by the artist, as well as talks and conversations about themes connected to her practice.
The programme Movement included a screening of the 2007 documentary Seven Easy Pieces by Babette Mangolte, about Marina Abramović’s ground-breaking work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2005. Following the film, choreographer and director Wayne McGregor discussed his practice with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at Serpentine Galleries, addressing his research around movement and science, physical memory and the memory of touch.
Wayne McGregor is Artistic Director of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, Resident Company at Sadlerʼs Wells, and Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet. He is Professor of Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and has an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Plymouth University. He has created new works for Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, New York City Ballet, Australian Ballet, English National Ballet, NDT1 and Rambert Dance Company among others. McGregor has also directed movement for theatre and film including Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire and has choreographed music videos including the Grammy-nominated Lotus Flower for Radiohead and Ingenue for Atoms for Peace. He has also directed opera for La Scala, Milan, and the Royal Opera House, London, and choreographed for plays, musicals, fashion shows and art galleries, including site-specific installations at the Hayward Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, National Gallery, Canary Wharf, Glastonbury, the Pompidou Centre and for Secret Cinema. Most recently he premiered Kairos for Zurich Ballet, Tetractys – The Art of Fugue for The Royal Ballet, Atomos for Wayne McGregor | Random Dance and presented Thinking with the Body at Wellcome Collection, an exhibition exploring his collaborative enquiry into choreographic thinking. McGregor’s work has earned him three Critics’ Circle Awards, two Time Out Awards, two South Bank Show Awards, two Olivier Awards, a prix Benois de la Danse and a Critics’ Prize at the Golden Mask Awards. In 2011 McGregor was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for Services to Dance.
Babette Mangolte is an internationally known experimental filmmaker and a photographer living in New York. Among her most recent films, Seven Easy Pieces had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. She shot two films about the choreographies of Yvonne Rainer, AG Indexical in 2007 and RoS Indexical in 2008. She also shot Trisha Brown’s choreography Roof Piece on the High Line (shot in 2011 and edited in 2012), Her most recent film Edward Krasiński’s Studio was filmed in Warsaw in 2011 and edited in 2012 and premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013. She also completed in 2012 a film shot in 1988 and 1991 of Patricia Patterson’s Paintings. Her recent installations are Presence (Berlin Biennale, 2008), Rushes (Cologne, 2009) and How to look… (Whitney Museum of American Art, Biennale 2010). She recently completed an installation about the colour green at VOX in Montreal Éloge du Vert in 2013. Mangolte is also known for her photographic archive, which documents the experimental theatre, dance and performance scene of the 1970s and 1980. She has published essays, theorising her practice as a filmmaker and as a photographer and has written about technological transformations in film with the advent of digital.
