*SEE LARGE PHOTOS on web page FLICKR ??? Ask Andrew and Jamille about FLICKR???? Early on we used it, where are the photos filed?

Thresholds Crossed – Gulag / Art Angar (Film Short: 3:51) (2004)

(2004) Thresholds Crossed/Art Angar – Political dance film short shot on Solovky Island, Russia, in an historic building  noted for Soviet Era architecture, a building later associated with the Russian Gulag. This unique building was the hangar for a dirigible (airship) that delivered supplies to the GULAG prisoners.*  The film features the first half of part II of the stage work, Thresholds Crossed, a dramatic duet with dancers Maida Withers and Anthony Gongora wrestling with the inhumanity of the USA Guantanamo Bay debacle.**  Audrey Chen, extreme vocalist/cellist, brings intensity to the dancers passionate performance.  Linda Lewett, camera, captures the intensity of the dance and music performance with the intimacy required for the dramatic dance film short.  Solovki Island and the GULAG are known to us through the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

*This unique building temporarily housed the Art Angar Center for Contemporary Arts that sponsored Maida Withers Dance Construciton Company summer residency on the island.  Solovky Island is known for the spectacular 14th Century Monestary, still fully functioning today.

**The choreograph, Part II of Threshold Crossed evening-length work,  is based on photographs of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where political prisoners/detainees have been terrorized through various tactics (water boarding, exposure / nakedness). Russia had their GULAG and America has our Guantenamo Bay.

Film Showings:
Festival De Video Danse De Bourgogne, Burgundy France (2011)
Istanbul 2010 International Dance Festival, Istanbul, Turkey
2010 FinnUS American/Finnish Films, Embassy of Finland, Washington, DC; Artisphere DANCE:FILMS (October 21, 2011)
DanzLenz at the Habitat Center, New Delhi, India, February (2012)
others.  http://maidadance.com/works/thresholds–crossed–gulag–art–angar–film/

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Maida Withers and Anthony Gongora, MWDCCo
Linda Lewett, Photographer