Working at night, under the glare of automobile headlights, a man scours and restores the facade of a building in New York's Soho district. With this visual metaphor, Barr opens Aeros, a look at the evolution of Trisha Brown's dance work Astral Convertible. Choreographed by Brown, with sets and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, the work premiered in New York in 1989 to critical acclaim. Barr traced the evolving production process over a two-year period, following the company to Moscow, France, Florida, and New York. He allows the dynamics of the choreography to emerge organically, without the imposition of a documentary voice.
Shooting primarily at night, he evokes a mysterious world of darkness, with sounds isolated and magnified, and fleeting gestures and expressions caught in a sudden light. Interweaving dance sequences throughout, he distills the essence of Brown's choreography through close-ups, a continually moving and dynamic camera, and slow motion. Fusing the original score with the heightened ambient sounds, he layers a subtle, evocative soundtrack of leitmotifs. Through his fluid orchestration of space and time, stillness and movement, light and dark, Barr creates a seamless, self-contained world that works in tandem with the dance's physical reality.
Director: Burt Barr. Producer: Susan A. Fait. Choreographer: Trisha Brown. Visual Presentation: Robert Rauschenberg. Project Advisor: Kathy High. Dance: "Astral Convertible." Dancers: Lance Gries, Nicole Juralewicz, Greg Lara, Carolyn Lucas, Diane Madden, Lisa Schmidt, Shelley Senter, Wil Swanson, David Thomson. Music: Richard Landry. Set Engineering: Per Biorn. Camera: Paul Gibson, Burt Barr. Sound: Michael Barosky. Film: "Home Made," Robert Whitman. Editors: Kathy High, Burt Barr. On-Line Editor: Robert Burden. Sound Effects: Burt Barr. Sound Editor: Kathy High. A Coproduction of Burt Barr and Trisha Brown Company, Inc. in association with WGBH-TV, Boston and La SEPT, Paris.