Spoleto Festival USA announces acclaimed video installation, slow dancing, to be raised in Marion Square as part of 2017 season

Spoleto Festival USA General Director Nigel Redden today announced the installation of photographer David Michalek’s Slow Dancing in Marion Square during the Festival’s 41st season. Sponsored by Wells Fargo as a gift to the community, the large-scale video exhibition—including three five-story screens—will be set up nearest the corner of King and Calhoun streets, and run continuously from 9:00pm to 11:00pm each evening from May 25 to June 9. Redden and Mayor John Tecklenburg will provide opening remarks on Thursday, May 25, at 8:45pm. The exhibit will be free for all passersby. Additional support for Slow Dancing provided by the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Conceived and directed by David Michalek and first mounted in 2007 for New York City’s Lincoln Center Festival, Slow Dancing features silent, high-definition videos showing 43 dancers moving at less than one-hundredth of their original speed. To create the film, Michalek asked the subjects to prepare five seconds of movement, of which Michalek recorded at 1,000 frames per second. Through this process, each five-second clip was transformed into roughly 10 minutes, drawing out every miniscule movement to a mesmerizing effect. Of the work’s premiere, The New York Times wrote, “The effect of seeing human faces and bodies in crystalline extreme slow motion has been revelatory, to dancers and nondancers alike.”

The film is projected on three 40- by 30-foot screens playing simultaneously, juxtaposing three dancers in continually changing order. The 44 dancers in the films vary in age, movement style, body shape, ethnicity, and gender. Artists include former New York City Ballet principal dancers Wendy Whelan, Allegra Kent, and Janie Taylor; postmodern choreographers Bill T. Jones, the late Trisha Brown, Eiko and Koma, and Elizabeth Streb; breakdancer Christopher “Lil C” Toler; tap dancer Roxanne Butterfly; and voguer Benny Ninja; among many others—a full list is available here. Since its debut, Slow Dancing has seen installments in a wide range of international venues including Pomona College Museum of Art in Los Angeles; La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy; the Opera Bastille in Paris; London’s Trafalgar Square; and Harvard University.

Slow Dancing in Marion Square will be presented rain or shine. In the event of inclement weather, updates will be posted on the Festival’s website at spoletousa.org.

Throughout Spoleto Festival USA’s installation of Slow Dancing, Piccolo Spoleto (under the direction of the City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs) will host correlated events. Those details will be announced by the City at a later date.

David Michalek began his professional photographic career in 1991 and worked regularly as a portrait artist for publications such as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Interview, and Vogue. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Michalek began experimenting with performance and installation, and developing large-scale, multi-dimensional projects. His focus over the past ten years has been closely tied to his interest in the contemporary person, which he explores through the use of performance techniques, storytelling, movement and gesture. His solo and collaborative work has been exhibited at The Kitchen, Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University, Sadler’s Wells, Trafalgar Square, Opera Bastille, Venice Biennale, Yale University, Lincoln Center, and at the Edinburgh Festival at Summerhall with the Richard DeMarco Foundation. Projects include Portraits in Dramatic Time (2011), presented at the Lincoln Center Festival, and 14 Stations (2002–2008), a multi-media project encompassing photography, projections, spoken word, testimony, and conversation shown at the Brooklyn Museum and Yale Divinity School. He has collaborated with director Peter Sellars on two staged works: Kafka Fragments, presented as part of Carnegie Hall’s 2005-06 season, and St. Francois d’ Assise, presented at the Salzburg Festival and Paris Opéra. Other film and video work for theater includes collaborations with The Tallis Scholars; John Malpede and L.A.P.D. on three works, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Michalek lives in New York City with his wife, dancer Wendy Whelan.

Spoleto Festival USA

For 17 days and nights each spring, Spoleto Festival USA fills Charleston, South Carolina’s historic theaters, churches, and outdoor spaces with performances by renowned artists as well as emerging performers in dance, music, opera, and theater. The Festival’s 41st season takes place May 26 to June 11. The full 2017 program, including more than 160 ticketed events, can be found at spoletousa.org.

The public can purchase Spoleto Festival USA tickets by visiting spoletousa.org anytime, or by calling the Festival box office at 843-579-3100 from 10:00am to 6:00pm, Monday through Saturday. Additionally, tickets are available at a box office in the Charleston Gaillard Center (95 Calhoun Street): Monday through Sunday from 9:00am to 5:00pmand Sunday, June 11, from 9:00am to 2:00pm.