FRAME BY FRAME: CREATIVITY AND COLLABORATION

by John Hart

In Frame by Frame, their homage to Norman McLaren, Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté honour the technique, care, passion and patience that the pioneering animator invested in every frame of his films. The 2018 ballet enters McLaren’s imaginative landscape and becomes a mediation on how film, movement, music and dance produce an effect greater than the sum of its parts.

A ballet lover, McLaren had a deep interest in movement and music which he brought to his work, along with an exuberant sense of joy. Lepage and Côté took their inspiration from these qualities to explore McLaren’s creative processes and collaborative circle. Frame by Frame also examines and extends McLaren’s fascination with the ways technology can be employed to produce and become a moving piece of art.

“A cinematic genius who made films without cameras and music without instruments.”

– National Film Board

McLaren’s experiments in filmmaking were idiosyncratic and accessible, whimsical and aesthetically brilliant. Each project was infused with McLaren’s personal sense of curiosity, discovery and playfulness. It took many months, sometimes over a year, to create a film, especially if McLaren was painting directly on film strip. Just think: a five minute film was made up of 7,200 individual frames that McLaren animated one at a time: frame by frame. Is the animation perfect? No, but each film has its own sense of character and energy. The imperfections themselves give the films life and reveal the hand and creativity of the artist.

“I want the show to be an homage from the digital age to Norman McLaren, to the analog world.”

– Robert Lepage

Lepage was long intrigued by Norman McLaren and his ability to create ground-breaking films prior to computer animation. There are direct parallels in the hallmarks of McLaren’s and Lepage’s artistic styles: the use of technology to tell stories, a fusion of art forms, a collaborative process and a personal dedication to creativity and innovation. Like many of McLaren’s projects, the creation of Frame by Frame was itself a collaboration, with Lepage’s Ex Machina studio, the National Film Board and The National Ballet of Canada.

As choreographer, Côté’s task was to create movement in tandem with McLaren’s films screened onstage, to extrapolate from the films or to replicate them in real time. Undoubtedly the climax of the ballet is the stunning Pas de deux (1968), one of McLaren’s three dance films. Côté reproduces the film in its entirety and the ballet uses today’s technology to re-create McLaren’s filmic effects. The scene is breathtaking, especially how it wonderfully and emotionally captures McLaren’s celebration of the art of dance.

“Frame by Frame is a portrait of Norman McLaren – his life, his work, his relationship to dance and how he revolutionized the discipline of animation by being true to himself.”

– Guillaume Côté