Photo: Maria Falconer, from the series How Do You Dance in a War Zone?
A Photo / Video Exhibition
The wonderful thing about working in photography and video is that I never quite know where it will take me. For instance, in 2023, 12 months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, I had an online conversation with a leading choreographer in Kyiv called Viktor Ruban. As a result, myself and my professional partner Paul Hill made two trips to Ukraine to work with a group of extraordinary dancers and a sound artist. To cut a very long story short, the project resulted in a photo and video exhibition, How Do You Dance in a War Zone? that is now travelling around the UK and Ukraine.
The Concept
The idea was to collaborate with Ukrainian professional dancers to try to answer the question how do you dance in a war zone? Not with words, but through the language of the body and movement. We worked with professional dancers, volunteer soldiers and had special access to the Ukrainian Army. And over the course of two weeks we collected still images, text and video footage. Then we spent three months shaping all the material into an installation piece. The dancers were so very generous, trusting us to create something that we hope goes a little way towards expressing the complexity of their experience.
The incredible sound track was created by Grigory Semenchuk and comprises recordings from the invasion including, sounds from the trenches, shootings, sirens, missiles, tanks and drones.
This is a very short extract from the video which is 12 mins long.
Video extract from How Do You Dance in a Was Zone, 2023
Exhibitions
The work opened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023 and has been shown in festivals and galleries in the UK and Ukraine. Including the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv and the Hnat Khotkevych Palace of Culture, Lviv.
The next exhibition of How Do You Dance in a War Zone? in the UK will be at Photo North Festival in Leeds from 18 -13th April – full details here PHOTONORTH. Paul and I will be giving a talk about the work on Saturday 12th April at 15.00, please do come along and say hello if you are at the festival.
You can find out more about this work and Maria’s other photographic projects on her sister website mariafalconer.co.uk
If you are interested in learning more about project based photography check out our workshop and mentoring pages.