Direction and production: Igor Elie-Pierre
Choreography and performance: Emma Gordon, Madison Lynch
Cinematography: Igor Elie-Pierre
Editing: Igor Elie-Pierre
Color Grading: Jack Kibbey Newman
Costumes: Hania New York (sweaters), KD New York (dancewear)
Music: IGOR360
Piano credits: Hanxin Chi
Music Mastering: Enyang Urbiks
Multi-media artist Igor Elie-Pierre is not a performer, but he understands the performative aspect of living in today’s world. As a society, we are constantly bombarded by images- commercials, billboards, memes, reels, ads on Instagram, pop-ups on YouTube. We put ourselves on display each time we post a story, photo or video of the places we visit and the things we do. The ubiquitous nature of social media contributes to our unwitting roles as performers, sharing and consuming media so often during our day to day lives that we rarely stop to think about the messages we are sending and how they are being received. Elie-Pierre, however, is pausing to think. As a graphic designer, his expertise in branding and his deep interest in universal design principles naturally developed into a desire to connect with his customers in new ways, drawing parallels between design clients and audience members as consumers of art. Merged Subjects, Elie-Pierre’s first work on film, serves as a way for him to explore that connection through a different form while reaching a wider “customer” base.
His design concept, while not entirely new in the fields of dance film or choreography, is intriguing and rife with possibility. Choreographers Emma Gordon and Madison Lynch, Elie-Pierre’s collaborators for Merged Subjects, dance together but did not actually meet until the final shooting session. Each on their own, Gordon and Lynch responded intuitively to the electronic sound score, creating individual phrases that were then experimented with and edited. What struck me while watching Merged Subjects was how kindred Gordon and Lynch’s movement sequences are despite being created separately. Circularity in arms that softly embrace the air around them, liquid fingers that curl and unfold, rotating wrists, snaking shoulders, and circular pathways are the most prominent shared themes, creating an instant affinity between two strangers. Elie-Pierre, who treats the camera as another body in space to capture movement from varying angels, employs editing tools to direct his audiences’ eyes to common actions- an unfurling arm, a soaring turn- and in this way attempts to construct a message of interrelatedness, connection, and rapport regardless of physical proximity. It works to a degree.
While there is plenty of beautiful movement in the film, Merged Subjects feels like an assault, the high-speed relentless camera cuts creating a ceaseless barrage of shifting images. While this onslaught might very well be Elie-Pierre’s intent, to illustrate the media blitz that has become so normal in today’s society and evoke numbness in viewers, that calculated apathy may spur detachment, thereby watering down the film’s main themes. In any form of storytelling, contrast serves to illuminate important topics and highlight the authors main idea. Often while watching Merged Subjects, I wanted the camera to linger a little longer on the movement, showing more of what came before or after Gordon and Lynch’s solo phrases and interactions. Adding even a few more seconds to varying sections, surprising the audience with timing shifts and offering respite, could prove very effective in assisting their ability to process and make meaning from the onrush of images.
Elie-Pierre plans to create more films exploring concepts of universal branding with the hopes of using both professional and non-professional dancers and dancers of varying physical abilities, an excellent idea that can serve to make dance more accessible to a wider audience through social media. In an interview with Elie-Pierre, I asked him why he choose to work in the medium of dance film? “I see dance as the most communicative art form and more empathetic than most,” he said. “Anyone in any field can learn from dancers because they know how to embody characters.” I couldn’t agree more! From his continued work with dancers, I also hope he acquires experience in the subtle intricacies of the relationship between time and space in the art of dance, and how those elements can be manipulated through the camera to offer audiences a perspective they can only get by watching dance on film.
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