Other Life Reviewed!
7/6/2008 | By Austin
‘Other Life’ premiered this last week to a glowing review in The Washington Post.
‘“Other Life,” a 15-minute movie by Austin Elston, Emily Gallagher and Kelly Mayfield, told a wistful love story through balletic modern dance and stylish black-and-white footage.
Choreographed by Mayfield (founder and artistic director of Contradiction Dance), the film interwove an intense, closely embracing pas de deux sequence — Mayfield and Boris Willis, in resonant interpretations of two lovers — with sequences evoking an elegant boudoir and (shades of “Anna Karenina” here) a 19th-century train station. Terence Nicholson’s melancholy original score, with its minimalist arpeggios and yearning string sounds, gave way now and then to suspenseful footsteps and ticking clocks. With enigmatic silent-movie-style captions (along the lines of “Doubt returns!”) and resonant imagery — billowing train-station steam, faces captured in an ornate hand mirror, fleeting glimpses of subsidiary characters portrayed by other dancers — the piece was stirring and poignantly open-ended.‘
Correction: Music is by Terence Nicholson and John Osebold.