‘Beneath Sky Snakes’ is a video-dance work filmed during the first few days as New Zealand emerged from its first lockdown due to the global Coronavirus pandemic in late May 2020. Unexpectedly locked down in the place of my childhood, after not having spent significant time for 25 years, the film is in part a danced response between and the highly choreographic kinetic sculpture installation ‘Sky Snakes’ by acclaimed artist Len Lye, and a reflection into the personal experience of location and temporality and described as a ‘re-inscription of himself into his birth lands through a dynamic relationship between land, sea, and the sculptures of Len Lye.’
Growing up, Len Lye’s kinetic sculptures are among my first tangible experiences with art and are imprinted on my memory as objects that were incredibly dynamic and other. Responding to the inherent choreography of the newly expanded ‘Sky Snakes’(1965/2019) has revealed a powerful connection between my work, journey as a dance artist, and its impact on my life. Growing up with a sense of otherness within myself, experiencing lockdown and creating this work I was re-confronted with these truths and it has become a direct link through time to my past, magnified by a powerful and personal sense of return and locality, experiencing lockdown home in Taranaki after many years away. Counter-pointed with the theatrical vision within the gallery space, the layered locationing of the dancing body and its relationship to the other-worldly sculpture, contained within the body of the gallery space and building, is expanded to include the timeless environment and locality of the region of Taranaki. The multi-spiral action of the the sculptures choreography, is articulated and reconfigured within the dancing body suggesting a physical conversation between human and other, past and present, in an environment echoing the elemental, archaic and mythological separation of earth and sky, Gaia and Uranus, Ranginui and Papatūānuku.
- #Title: Beneath Sky Snakes
- #Director: Cameron McMillan
- #Choreography: Cameron McMillan
- #Country of Production: New Zealand, United Kingdom
- #Year of Production: 2020
- #Duration: 00:11:18
- #Dance and Acting: Cameron McMillan
- #Camera: Cameron McMillan, Mark Dwyer
- #Editing: Cameron McMillan
- #Sound: Cameron McMillan
- #Music: Richárd Riederaur
- #Webpage:
- #Trailer: