Elon & Emmanuelle

While it’s a bit sweeter than is my usual wont, this week’s selection for ScreenDance Diaries is a viable exploration of the intersections of dance, imagination, young love, and a brick wall. Elon & Emmanuelle depicts a young woman who stops to sit at a bench accompanied by a humungous white balloon, and begins to refresh herself with a drink while staring at the wall in front of her. What happens seems to be a fantastical projection of her subconscious desires: an imagined and soon to become real courtship through dance between the girl and her new love, a young man who happens along with his bicycle and takes a seat beside her. All this unfolds in projection on the brick wall she sits facing.

Girl receives gift from boy in
Girl receives gift from boy in “Elon & Emmanuelle”

While the mugging is a bit over the top at times, the choreography – more street than contemporary – has an engaging physicality and honesty, and the flattening of the dance onto the wall just works. I love the color palette and the music, and although it goes sadly un-used (and it’s white), I enjoyed the apparent homage to “The Red Balloon”— one of my all time favorite short films.

Heralding from Montreal, Elon & Emmanuelle is directed by Natalie Galazka, with music  composed and played by Garth Stevenson, featuring choreography and dance by Elon Höglund and Emmanuelle Lê Phan.  The short, based on and inspired by the street art of Banksy, ultimately succeeds as a lovely, imaginative, and very engaging fantasy of a dance film.

Enjoy.

[embedvideo id=”50074296″ website=”vimeo”]

Elon + Emmanuelle from Susan Armstrong on Vimeo.

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