Bright Hours

Paris-based Americans Gerard & Kelly develop an artistic identity at the crossroads of dance and contemporary art. Their multidisciplinary practice, which lies somewhere between installation and performance, incorporates video, writing, choreography, drawing, and sculpture. Their work explores the critical potential of intimacy to bring about radical social change.

The film Bright Hours is part of a longer work cycle, Modern Living, which explores the cultural, social, and political mechanisms between residential architecture and the human relationships that develop within it. The film focuses on and speculates about the relationship between architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and dancer Josephine Baker (1906-1975) during a cruise in 1929.
The artists infuse Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse with joyful sensuality and subversive force, re-imagining the architect’s modernist masterpiece in Marseille as a boat floating on the horizon, suspending norms and boundaries for the duration of the voyage. Bright Hours stars Jeanne Balibar as Le Corbusier and Emara Neymour-Jackson, a young American dancer, as Josephine Baker. Germain Louvet, star of the Paris Opera Ballet, joins forces with a troupe of musicians and dancers from Marseille to transform the Cité Radieuse into an explosion of colour and community. Moses Sumney composes and performs an original score inspired by Baker’s songs.