Abstract/Summary

The video Ballet engages with recent histories of rural filmmaking, linking everyday farming movements with the aesthetics of dance. Starting point for this new work is a series of archival films from the collection of the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), which provide warnings of contagion and nuclear catastrophe, describing procedure and instruction in the case of emergency. These films present a unique vision of rural labour and collective staged action, where extras, rural background actors, are performing 'normality' prior to potential disruption of an imminent crisis. Szuper Gallery's video deconstructs the movements of extras in these rural propaganda films. It features a large cast of dancers and non-dancers in a spectacular rural setting performing a new choreography to a dramatic sound score.