Artist
Michael Caldwell

© Michael Caldwell in Film: Rope by Francesco Gagliardi, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada

Michael Caldwell is a Toronto-based choreographer/performer. A graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, he has interpreted roles for many of Canada’s esteemed dance creators, including Peggy Baker, Sylvie Bouchard, Danny Grossman, Guillaume Côté, Maxine Heppner, Sasha Ivanochko, James Kudelka, Louis Laberge-Côté, Laurence Lemieux, Tedd Robinson, William Yong, among others, and has performed across Canada and the United States, in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Michael was an interpreter at Le Groupe Dance Lab, studying with the iconic Peter Boneham.

Michael is quickly emerging as a skilled, and critically acclaimed choreographer. His recent works include: Ash Unravel, an acclaimed solo based on his journey to Vietnam; The Horologium, a whimsical group piece created for Dusk Dances; and Mary, a dynamic new solo for Stéphanie Tremblay Abubo. With a bachelor’s degree in film and art history from Syracuse University, Michael seeks to incorporate cinematic sensibilities in all his work. Upcoming, Michael will begin creation on a new group choreography, based on loneliness and isolation.

Performance
Film: Rope by Francesco Gagliardi

Curated and produced by FADO Performance Art Centre, and presented in the context of the 2013 Images Festival.

Film: Rope explores the relationship between cinematic space and the space of live performance, and our ways of interpreting and recollecting the experience of movement within the film frame.

In Dangling that Rope, Andrew James Paterson writes, “In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has accentuated the simultaneous clash and fusion of different disciplines by using as source material a film that has been controversial at a number of different levels: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Rope is something of an anomaly within the Hitchcock canon, as it is directed to appear as if consisting almost entirely of one continuous shot. In this respect, it breaks the modernist dictum that film should not appear simply to be recorded theatre. The film eschews montage altogether.”

Rope (1948) is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most experimental films. Containing only four unmasked cuts, it was shot in single ten-minute takes (the length of a camera roll), tracking in and out of black surfaces (the back of a jacket or a piece of furniture) to create the illusion of even longer continuous shots. This virtuoso technique, which required the constant shifting of stage walls, furniture, and props to make way for the camera, was partly developed by the director in order to convey the illusion of theatrical real time and continuous space.

By paradoxically attempting to re-embody and transpose the movements and positions of the characters in the film in relation to a live audience, Film: Rope perversely exposes and explores the discontinuities and incongruities between cinema and live performance.

CREDITS
Created by Francesco Gagliardi
Performed by Cara Spooner, Francesco Gagliardi, Marcin Kedzior and Michael Caldwell

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performances
April 12–14, 2013 @ 3:00pm
April 16, 2013 @ 7:00pm & 8:30pm
The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen Street West, Toronto

FADO Artist Talk, moderated by Andrew James Paterson
April 14, 2013 @ 4:30pm
The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen Street West, Toronto

Images Artist Talk: Performance and Media Art: Tools with Which to Deconstruct
With Francesco Gagliardi, Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater
April 15, 2013 @ 4:00pm
Urban Space Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto

© Francesco Gagliardi, Film: Rope, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer