Wednesday 19 August 2015

DFFUK: REVIEW: Living With Sin


Living With Sin – Lizzie J Klotz & Lucia Schweigert
Dance Film Festival UK
O2 Think Big Hub
Saturday 8th August 2015

Living With Sin appears at first as an intimate encounter; the camera focuses intrusively on a woman’s skin, her hair, her shoulders, her face; revealing dustings of gold glitter. But as the work progresses, Lizzie J Klotz and Lucia Schweigert’s discussion of the Christian doctrine of original sin becomes clear.

Dancer Jonna Tideman’s crimson jumper layered over a red dress is striking in front of a bleak stone landscape. The colours seem to connote anger, frustration, guilt, despair, and above all, sin. All of which are easy to identify. Quick, flashing images of Tideman’s face, twisted with pain, fractures the scene- as she sits seemingly serene on stone steps.

Later, Tideman is seen dancing in long black robes, again filmed against a stark concrete landscape. She is positioned off-centre, often disappearing out of the frame all together. In fact, the colours, unconventional positioning and the disjointed sound of mbira cycles (African thumb piano) all seem to hint at the fragmentation of womanhood.

Indeed, the simultaneously introspective and frantic tone of Klotz and Schweigert’s work unites all experiences in one woman.


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