About
Peter Sparling
Born in Detroit, MI
Lives & works in Ann Arbor, MI
I am an interdisciplinary artist whose work is profoundly inspired by my 55-year career as dancer/choreographer. My paintings--mostly acrylic on canvas, fabric or for film animation-- and my dance videos or "screendances" evolve from my edited videos of dancing bodies.
PAINTINGS
As with much of my work since I began to paint a decade ago, the brush stroke in my paintings follows the contours of the dancing body. I videotape myself or other dancers moving against greenscreen then use chromakey effect in editing to float the moving figure—often in slow motion--and project it directly onto the canvas. A visceral transference occurs as I freely improvise with brush, anticipating or following the figure over multiple takes to capture impressions of its energy, shapes and pathways. With the completed accumulation taking on its own presence or field of action, I invite the viewer to share an exchange of kinesthetic empathy while blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Brush strokes range from delicate calligraphy to full-body inscriptions of movement in passing and left behind.
VIDEOS
My screendances have become a means of extending my love of performance and choreography for the stage onto the screen. How can I translate the visceral sensations and impact of live performance onto a flat screen? Two decades of experimentation with camera and editing on Final Cut Pro have taught me how the rectangle of the screen is not unlike the proscenium frame or canvas: there are entrances and exits, the negative space around the moving figure(s), depth, gravity, flow, the bending of time and space, fade-ins and fade-outs, the "fourth wall", and all the editing effects that allow me to create illusions that I could never achieve on the live stage. That said, I often will combine live performance with video projection... to "have it all"! But making work specifically for the screen fuses the visceral with the visual in ways that define a new and exciting poetics and politics going back to the origins of film and forward to the frontiers of digital media.
Myt screendancxes are shown at film festivals and dance on camera festivals, on television, laptop, iPhone, and via social media. The potential for new audiences expands exponentially.
BIO
Peter Sparling is Rudolf Arnheim Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Dance and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan. A graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and The Juilliard School, Sparling was a member of the José Limón Dance Company and principal dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company. He directed Michigan’s own Peter Sparling Dance Company from 1993-2008 and was recognized with the 1998 Governor’s Michigan Artist Award. He is a lecturer, published poet and essayist. His dances for video have been selected for numerous international festivals, including the New York Dance on Camera Festival, American Dance Festival Dance Film & Video Festivals, Lisbon’s InShadow Festival, DANCE:FILMS Glasgow, Screen Dance International and Ann Arbor Film Festival. His screendance, The Snowy Owl, was featured in the Court Métrage of the Cannes Film Festival 2015. His made-for-TV work, Climbing Sainte-Victoire, was broadcast on Michigan Television in 2009. The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival screened his video, “Winterreise”, with live musical performance at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2022. An avid painter, Sparling has presented five solo exhibits and had works featured in numerous group shows.