The Winter 2019 special issue of British Art Studies (BAS) will present content inspired by the pacifist satire, The Ballet of the Nations, which was written by Vernon Lee in 1915 and illustrated by Maxwell Armfield as a response to the outbreak of war. Coordinated by the art historian Grace Brockington, the issue will feature an online exhibition of her research on avant-garde theatre groups in London during the First World War.
Film still, The Ballet of the Nations, 2018.
The special issue will also host an exciting new film produced by Impermanence, a contemporary dance company, which re-imagines The Ballet of the Nations as a script for performance today. Directed by Roseanna Anderson and Joshua Ben-Tovim, with production design by Pam Tait and an original soundtrack by Robert Bentall, Impermanence’s film incorporates original dialogue inspired by Lee’s text, among intricate and stylised dance pieces.
In this interview, conducted by BAS editors Baillie Card and Sarah Victoria Turner, the directors reflect on their creative process. A longer version will be published in the journal’s special issue.
BAS: This was your first major film production. How did choreographing for film differ from choreographing for a live performance?
Roseanna: Film gives you the opportunity to direct the gaze of the audience through a sort of choreography for the camera. This expanded the creative considerations and felt incredibly exciting.
BAS: Were there models, or sources of inspiration, in terms of dancing on camera, which helped you think through this project?
Roseanna: I love how dance is captured in Busby Berkeley films, and we incorporated ideas and techniques from some of those old Hollywood classics. We’d referenced his work previously in stage productions, and it was great to explore them more in their native medium.
Josh: Daniel Hay Gordon and Eleanor Perry are artists we’ve worked closely with in the past, and who over the years, have always made beautiful short experimental dance films. These definitely fed into the way we thought about colour, pace, framing, narrative, and abstraction in our film.
Film still, The Ballet of the Nations, 2018.
BAS: When did Grace bring you the book itself, The Ballet of the Nations? Can you remember whether its aesthetics made an impression on you?
Josh: Really early on, she showed us a first edition—her enthusiasm around it and the sense of it as a solid artefact was immediate. The language is quite dense, but the completeness of the allegory, which describes the tragic nature of conflict and how the grapples of the collective unconscious can lead to war, was so impressive.
Roseanna: We had been reflecting on Impermanence’s collaborative working methods, and how it’s important to have a specific thing in the middle of a process—so that everyone can respond to something, rather than the central “idea” existing in someone’s head. And all of a sudden, Grace appeared and brought with her this incredible timeless object!
BAS: The film ends with a list of all the wars that have taken place since the First World War. When did that idea come about?
Roseanna: I was thinking about the final sequence during the last weeks of editing. How could we show that this story was from the First World War, acknowledge our own time, whilst gesturing to everything in between? I kept thinking about the last line in the book “And thus the ballet of the nations is still a dancing.” The shockingly long list of wars affirms Lee’s prophetic vision and the foreboding nature of the text.
Film still, The Ballet of the Nations, 2018.
BAS: Is any specific imagery in the film drawn from Grace’s research into the visual culture of the First World War?
Josh: Margaret Morris photographs inspired poses and frieze-like movements, whilst Edward Gordon Craig stage designs influenced the lighting and scenery. A big part of our role, with Pam Tait, was to scan volumes of source imagery and then ask, how do we translate this material into something on bodies, in film, in a space, as part of the storyline?
BAS: This was your first experience directing a large-scale film. How did you communicate your vision to the dancers and crew?
Josh: In film, you can do anything anywhere, but there are lots of logistical constraints. The process of film-making feels like finding a way to marry these two opposing forces. Through working with some amazingly talented people, we were able to develop a shared vision and plan our time on set very clearly. It’s been an amazing process.
