Koki Nakano recently came into my consciousness when some of the short films made – or more formulaically speaking – some of the music videos made for his pieces appeared in a Japanese magazine in which my work was also being featured. Besides the beauty of his music and the overall aesthetics of several short films that feature it, the title of this series, namely “Pre-Choreographed,” caught my eye.
Near Perfect Synchronization opens with an overhead, panoramic shot of a lot filled with tractors, earth moving, earth boring, and other such industrial equipment parked in near perfect formation — spatially equidistant in relationship one to another. As the film unfolds, it is portrayed as an architectural landscape… a place with its own strange and singular character, memories, and beauty.
I’ve always been a fan of industrial locations – old rusty oil pumps, gravel fields, factory plants where the presence of people is hauntingly absent like ghost towns. And in Near Perfect Synchronization when the stunning dancer Amala Dianor appears, the unequivocal humanity and the honesty of his movement and face creates a beautiful dichotomy. The tracking camera movement in concert with the location and choreography makes for a striking singularity, and creates a kind of unlikely lullaby, especially when we experience the texture of the air in some shots, and a lovely improvised, contemporary pas de deux he performs with a floating piece of plastic .
Directed by Benjamin Seroussi, Near Perfect Synchronization is a stunning and near perfect short dance film, which also happens to be a music video with beautiful cinematography, dance, and of course music.
Enjoy.
