As Philip writes,

“In a sense, the project was initiated after my mother’s death. Every Friday evening, shortly before sunset, she would light the Sabbath candles. Though she was not an overtly religious woman, she held dear this tradition, and would invest the moment with specialness. It was, I believe, for her, a significant meditation and a moment of renewal. When it came time to pack up her belongings from the apartment, I felt it was important to offer her candelabra to someone who also engaged in this ritual, and bestowed the same importance in upholding the custom. But my partner encouraged me to keep this family heirloom, and soon after I found myself continuing the ritual of lighting the Sabbath candles.”

In sharing this inspiration, we would like to give the installation a dedication,

“For all our mothers.”

Outreach

Community activities could also include a candle-lighting ceremony bringing together a multitude of cultures and experiences.

Ami Shulman’s work as a dance artist and practitioner of the Feldenkrais method, and her highly dynamic process focused on connectivity and sensitized somatic awareness informed her work on this project. She was able to direct the performers and enhance their efficiency and clarity of movement, allowing for a more refined and articulated physical expression. Should local exhibition venues be in a position to accommodate Feldenkrais movement workshops, these could be created, geared to the wider public in parallel to the exhibition.

Storytelling evenings aligned with the Shabbat candelighting experience could also be offered. Intercultural Shabbat community meals could also be part of the outreach activities.

Live performances have also been mounted in relation to the 1001 Lights exhibition. In Perth, Scotland, dancers from the Edinburgh-based Danns Ed company responded to the work in the creation of a six-minute trio, Three Lights, co-choreographed by Dru Stine, Holly Mcdonald, and Sarah Peachy, using the whispered prayers as part of their soundtrack. Marlene Millar notes:

The structure of the choreography reflected the choreographer’s own connection to the installation, how the ritual of the candle lighting offers a moment of calm and focus from an otherwise busy, often charged routine. The piece opens with the women walking and running to the soundtrack of a cacophony of voices, then settles into a meditative silence, with the gentle murmur of prayer just audible as the dance becomes more circular in shape, synchronized and ends with the trio of hand gestures, inspired by triptych of hands in 1001 Lights.

While in Melbourne, Swedish-based performer, choreographer, writer, and educator Israel Aloni explored the question, “Where does the candle lighting ritual of Shabbat and the gender roles assigned to it come from?” through dance, voice, imagery and text. He speaks about being “really intrigued by the notion of the hand movements and gestures in a traditional and ancient ritual, such as the kindling of Shabbat candles, being looked at through the prism of choreography.” He further states,

On a sensorial level, I was drawn to the power of light, and mainly flame, to resonate heat and energy and therefore, movement. In my live response to the video installation, I predominantly worked with these three element[s]: the gender specificity of the ritual, the correspondence between the ritual and the longing to connect to the divine, and light as [to] eradicate … darkness.

In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, dance artist Suzanne Miller and fiber artist Mindy Yan Miller performed Needle and Thread at the Gordon Snelgrove Art Gallery in concert with 1001 Lights for a special commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day. And in Montréal, dancer-choreographer Lucy Fandel created a new fifteen-minute-long meditative dance work inspired by 1001 Lights, entitled Lueur dans la nuit (Flickers in the Night), performed at the Museum of Jewish Montreal, as part of the city’s all-night Nuit Blanche festivities. Throughout the piece, small candles and lights are gradually dispersed around the room as the dancers occupy the space, with the installation-projection exhibit serving as backdrop during the performance. Fandel writes,

What stood out to me in 1001 Lights was the richness of detail revealed by darkness, silence, and the unknown. I decided to use the sensation of calm and the expansion of time provoked by the installation as the starting point for Lueur, starting each rehearsal in darkness with the lighting of candles… The expansion of time and detail in 1001 Lights gave us permission to stretch the darkness and quiet nearly to their breaking point in Lueur, asking the audience to slow down with us, to listen and observe the textured silences between us all.

Another accompanying presentation, this time in Bremen, Germany, initiated by steptext dance project, involved Berlin-based dancer and choreographer Ziv Frenkel, who effectively entered into dialogue with the 1001 Lights installation, in collaboration with musician and sound designer Florian Tippe. His work encoding><decoding deals with the complex connection between present experience, the act of generating memory as well as the act of remembering itself. In Frenkel’s words,

“Steps of the remembrance process can be described as Encoding and Decoding. Encoding refers to the process of transforming what is perceived and experienced into a form that makes it possible for the individual to remember it. The experience can be recalled or decoded at a later point in time and can thus be re-experienced. The weekly repetitive ritual of Shabbat evening prayer with its physical and sensual experience can also be transformed and encoded into a memory. This sensual experience can be recalled in the memory at any time, yet it changes constantly depending on when, how and where one remembers. Thus, the act of remembering creates a complex network of connections between past, present and future. The choreographic starting point for encoding><decoding is the act of walking – one step forward follows the next. This step forward is for a brief moment not only part of the present, but also symbolizes the endless movement forward towards an inevitable future. A step into a future that is waiting to become part of the present and immediately thereafter part of a past – steps that leave a past behind as they move one from the present into the future, always bearing within them the potential to become part of future memories.”

Mouvement Perpétuel is an award-winning Montreal-based independent film, video, and new media production company specializing in arts programming. Co-directors Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer create impressionistic dance-media films, arts documentaries and multi-channel video installations, feature expansive choreographies and portraits of some of Canada/Quebec’s leading contemporary dancers and choreographers and from across cultures within the Americas, Europe and Asia. Viewers are invited into a deeply intimate tracing of the curvatures of rich human experience.

Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer met in 1986 dancing in the work of New York choreographer Charles Dennis. Subsequently a friendship developed and their professional talents merged once more ten years later when they embarked on the first sketch of what was later to become the video series Moments in Motion/Au fil du mouvement. They shared a Fellowship for the Dance/Media Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, developing new ideas, and producing work in the United States. Their return to Canada saw the creation of Mouvement Perpétuel in 2001.

As media artists we are intrigued and inspired by the emotional depth of the proposed project, 1001 Lights. We see a wealth of possibilities in creating a visually arresting installation presented in situ in a gallery or exhibition space. One of our approaches to working in this genre of dance-media is to distill the essence of choreography and movement. Movement carries within itself implications of mood, purpose, function and emotion and one of the goals in creating dance on film, for us, has been to translate these qualities into a mediated experience.

In the case of 1001 Lights, we are taking the investigation of visuality into a digital media environment using projections, delving into the perceptual capacities of the spectator. A mediated approach can create an intimacy and a poetry of the senses, in the process allowing the viewer's perception and instincts to become active and involved. In this project, we are “rewriting” an individual’s ritualized movement of the candle-lighting experience. The intimacy that the camera provides is beautifully connected to the dynamic aliveness evoked by the ceremony, and opens our capacities as dance filmmakers to new understandings of visual perception and the shifting intercultural context bridging new media and movement (both choreographed and natural).

The challenge in filming dance is not just to show the viewer what the dance or movement is, but also to bring the viewer into the physical sensation of the body. In previous artistic endeavours, Lost Action Trace and Leaning on a Horse Asking for Directions, we focused on increasing the viewer’s experiential engagement and the quality of the stereoscopic (3D) experience, and examined spatial aspects of vision, depth perception and action coordination, all the while considering intercultural hybridity and visual perception.

We see this new project, 1001 Lights, as a natural and stimulating development for us, as we are constantly striving to find and explore new ways of expressing ideas while engaging in new dance-media platforms, and propelling us into new territories of investigation and achievement. We are advancing our recent explorations into immersive experience in greater depth, looking at how filming techniques and methods, along with projections, can amplify perspectives of the body in relation to the screen plane, and the ways in which screen projections communicate human impulse, intention, and feeling in relation to the flux of spectators interacting within the space.

For us, a priority is always to bring in new ideas and move forward the notion of “what’s next” for our work. In this case, video installations have the potential to be total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound, and as such our aim is to evoke and expand sense perception and cognition in a direct, simple manner, and bring movement to life in new ways.

1001 Lights trailer

 Exhibition Information

1001 Lights is intended for public exhibition as part of your future programming calendar. The installation strongly aligns exploring various forms of crossover projects, enhancing new media works combined with dance and movement. The installation's Jewish and intercultural focus provides an opportunity to invite audiences to an authentic dialogue on identity and artistic expression through artwork that extends beyond a singular screen or narrative form.

Floor Plan

Please refer to the appended floor plan for more specifics on 1001 Lights’ proposed projection schematic. The dimensions, scale and layout are suggestions only and may be adapted according to the available venue space.

LIGHTS MOVES SCREENDANCE FESTIVAL/LIMERICK CITY GALLERY OF ART 11/16

ON-SITE IMPROMPTUS/MING CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI) 6-8/17

MUSEUM OF JEWISH MONTREAL 1-4/18

JEWS AND JEWISHNESS IN DANCE: SCREENDANCE PHOENIX 10/18

LUMINOCITY FESTIVAL, KAMLOOPS ART GALLERY (KAMLOOPS, BRITISH COLUMBIA) 10/18

VIDEOSKIN/EDGE GALLERY (WHITEHORSE, YUKON) 11/18

JEWISH MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA (MELBOURNE) 3/19

GEORGE SNELGROVE GALLERY (SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN) 5/19

THRESHOLD ARTSPACE, (PERTH, SCOTLAND) 6-9/19

NOCTURNE FESTIVAL/EYELEVEL (HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA) 10/20

SCHWANKHALLE/STEPTEXT (BREMEN, GERMANY) 04-05/21

TANZRAUSCHEN POP ME UP, (WUPPERTAL, GERMANY) 01/22

LICHTHOF THEATRE (HAMBURG, GERMANY) 4/22

BROTFABRIK OVERBECK (DUISBERG, GERMANY) 5/22

EHEMALIGE SYNAGOGE (GELNHAUSEN, GERMANY) 6/22

DIALOGRAUM KREUZUNG ST. HELENA (BONN) 6/22

KIELER PUMPE (KIEL, GERMANY) 6/22

KINEMATHEK (KARLSRUHE, GERMANY) 6/22

EVANGELISCHE AKADEMIE (FRANKFURT, GERMANY) 6/22

HAUS MARTFELD, (SCHWELM, GERMANY) 12/22-2/23

Credits

Directors/Producers: Marlene Millar & Philip Szporer│Documentary footage & sound capture: Marlene Millar & Philip Szporer│Choreographer: Ami Shulman│Dance artists: Elizabeth Emberly, Carol Prieur, Nancy Prieur, Linda Rabin, Ami Shulman│Editor: Jules de Niverville│Sound designers: Luc Papineau & Devon Bate│Cinematography: Michael Wees│Additional camera: Bill Kerrigan│Projection designer: François Godard│Curatorial consultant: Kathy Sperberg│Camera assistants: Philip Fortin, Ginga Takeshima│Set Photographer: Anthony McLean│Project Coordinator: Lucy Fandel│Sound recording – voices: Tim Horlor│Voices: Ami Shulman, Linda Rabin, KJ Goldenberg, Carole Bitoun, Melissa Steiger, Philip Szporer, Fran Avni, Helen Binik, Rebecca Binik, Carmela Aigen, Razielle Aigen, Sharon Gubbay Helfer, Joseph Helfer, Sheila Segal.