Slow Dancing

A wonderful video installation called Slow Dancing is now running at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Five second clips of dancers in action (ballet, tap, flamenco, break dancing, capoeira, etc) have been slowed down to last between eight and 12 minutes. Because they are shot in high-definition, that means you can watch a single strand of hair fly through the air or a gesture ripple through a hand finger by finger. Some feel this creates a new art form. The dancers feel amazed, perplexed and strangely vulnerable. The curator talks about the beauty unleashed when we decelerate long enough to take in the details: “What the dancers’ being slowed down does is to reveal all of these beautiful, subtle changes in faces and bodies. This camera allows us to read moments that pass so quickly they don’t register.”