Melanie Manchot en

Biography

Dancing is the best revengeis the third part in a trilogy of events and video pieces by Melanie Manchot (DE/GB, 1966, based in London). In each case, the starting point has been a live, participatory event in public space, each in a different city: Paris in 2011, London in 2017 and Bienne in 2019, marking the end of Manchot’s exhibition at Pasquart. Like both previous events, Dancing is the best revenge was created in collaboration with dance schools and organisations representing different forms of dance, drawing together a plethora of choreographic gestures, languages and cultures. In the final iteration, seven dance schools, with a total of more than 60 dancers, were brought together to create a series of processions through Bienne, converging on the central square of the old city, the ‘Ring’. The video uses two distinct kinds of filming: a drone positioned at 90 degrees above some of the dancers, and close-up shots of dancers in semi-frozen “tableaux”. These two approaches allude both to the film work of celebrated choreographer Busby Berkeley, and the tableau-style images used by flashmobs.

Selected exhibitions: Pasquart, Bienne; BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck (2019); MAC/VAL, Vitry/Paris; Parafin, London (2017); Art Night, London (2017); Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (2016).