Rope Dance, 2015

Concept, title and score by Anna Halprin

Interpretations and variations by Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio

Performance and single channel video

Video duration: 31:21

Commissioned by The Fabric Workshop and Museum,

Philadelphia

Anna Halprin created a performance with Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio at her Mountain Home Studio in Kentfield, California in September 2014. Ropes formed the connective material between the artists’ bodies in motion.  

In the gallery, Rope Dance was given presence through a thirty-minute film of Halprin’s face witnessing the performance, and the sounds of Antoni and Petronio’s enactment on Halprin’s dance deck. As Antoni says: "the film is a document of the dance recorded on Anna's face." On specific occasions during the installation, Antoni and Petronio invited visitors to the exhibition to re-explore the materials and potentials of the performance in a participatory event.