Presentation at Dazibao (Montreal) planned by winter 2021, dv_vd screening session.

Vidéographe is pleased to welcome Canadian artist-in-residence Cai Glover. With this video-dance, dancer and choreographer Cai Glover explores sign-language poetry through a choreographic lens to reveal its expressiveness. Glover aims to draw attention to how, via gesture and movement, the signing hand may transmit poetic ideas in a clear, evocative, and emotional language, which often requires no translation to be understood.

With this project, Glover is interested in how we experience authenticity through our relationships with others. His research on the communicability of signed language is based on the tensions that exist between experiencing one’s own mental state and our need for contact with the other in order to constitute ourselves as individuals. The emptiness of the choreographic space that Glover proposes to explore, being free of forms, thus echoes a society that does not recognize the bordes specific to each individual. Without boundaries, it is impossible for individuals to become aware of their affects. It is thus through the relational tensions between two individuals who are attracted to each other that the affects of each may emerge out of their inherent need for recognition in the presence of others.

For this video-dance, the artist will collaborate with photographer and filmmaker Damian Siqueiros. He will also work with sign-language interpreters rather than professional dancers. Using this approach, the artist aims to ensure the clarity of the signed word and, thereby, the integrity of its poetics.