Evan Siebens (SEVEN), Canada image/Word.not_a_pipe 2003, USA 10’00’’

A lone man in an overcoat and bowler hat is obscurely displaced as he dances on a deserted windy beach, over a grassy knoll and through a crowded street. The figure represents Magritte's familiar symbol of the "Everyman." Kinetic and fast, the film uses surrealist techniques, frames within frames, dynamic text, and familiar objects that float around the dancer—an apple, a pipe, an umbrella—to transform the image beyond the real. The live dancer, represented by the same "Everyman," also comments on the signifier versus the signified, the danced image versus the dancer. Michel Foucault's text Ceci n'est pas une pipe is referenced by transposing words and images into code patterns from programming language in order to explore the distinction between similitude and resemblance.

b. in Canada. Lives and works in USA. She is a dance filmmaker. Ms. Siebens studied at Britain's Royal Ballet School and the National Ballet School of Canada before dancing and choreographing with the National Ballet of Canada and the Bonn Ballet in Germany. She has recently danced with DANZAISA in New York and KUNST-STOFF in San Francisco. Evan graduated from New York University's undergraduate film program, and was also one of the inaugural visiting artists to participate in the UCLA Dance/Media Fellowship. Ms. Siebens works as a dance cinematographer and videographer and has filmed dancers such as Mikhail Banyshnikov, Bill T. Jones, Jose Navas, Sara Rudner, Molissa Fenley, Peter Boal, Eiko, and Lucinda Childs.