ESKASIZER & Samba #2

Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner, a.k.a. chameckilerner, are Brazilian choreographers and filmmakers whose collaboration began with the shared desire to create work based on bold physicality. Moving from live performance to film did not diminish their interest in the body as a map of oneself. In residence to produce an EMPAC-commissioned dance film, chameckilerner experimented in the use of high-speed video to achieve extreme slow-motion images of dancers’ bodies—of various ages and shapes—in an Eskasizer vibrating belt massager. Zooming in to the point of abstraction, the result is a dance of the flesh. To achieve this result with 4,000-frames-per-second filming with the Phantom camera, EMPAC’s lighting team created a high-power lighting effect with custom-made diffusion panels.

During their 15-year collaboration, between 1992 and 2007, Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner created more than 10 evening-length dances that toured internationally to much critical acclaim. In 2007, they premiered EXIT at The Kitchen in New York City. EXIT was a goodbye to their dance career and marked the beginning of their filmmaking collaboration. In 2008, the two were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.