Dance and Eye
The “Dance and Eye” project will be presented at Galerie Bastide from 29th August to 4th October 2026. The exhibition is curated by Morleigh Steinberg and highlights Japanese dancer and choreographer Oguri, a major figure in contemporary dance and director of the Body Weather Laboratory. His work is presented through the eyes of five photographers: Andrew Macpherson, Richard Nielsen, Atiba Jefferson, Ricardo Vidana, and Tali Maranges.
The installation will comprise five screens as well as a screening room. Its premise is to show how five photographers from very different backgrounds—fine art, sports photography, rock music, popular culture, and fashion—interpret the same dancer. The aim is not to document a performance, but to explore the encounter between dance and the photographic gaze.
At the heart of the project lies a question:
Where does dance reside? In the dancer’s body, or in the eye of the beholder?
The project suggests that dance emerges through a collaboration between the dancer’s movement and the photographer’s gaze, with each influencing the other.
A 45-minute video, Dance and Eye, documents the working sessions between Oguri and the photographers. Made from footage captured by Roxanne Steinberg and edited by Morleigh Steinberg, it reveals the behind-the-scenes creative process and serves as the backbone of the exhibition.
Oguri’s dance is rooted in improvisation: he does not follow a predetermined theme, but responds to images, objects, and space. For him, creation emerges from an immediate response to the unexpected, and photography captures this improvisation rather than a fixed choreography.
His work as a choreographer shifted toward video following the 2020 lockdown. Aware that he could continue practicing his art but that direct engagement with audiences would be different, he began exploring how physical expression could be transmitted through remote communication technologies. “Never before had I been so intensely aware of the potential of the camera. It captured extremely close-up images of my pores reacting to microbes and insects moving across my skin, transmitting these intimate details to audiences scattered around the world: from the microcosm to the macrocosm.”
In 2022, Morleigh Steinberg invited him to a residency at Arcane Space (Venice, LA). Inspired by this choreographic exploration, an idea emerged: to collaborate individually with five photographers whose backgrounds and experiences were radically different, allowing five distinct perspectives to emerge, while entrusting a videographer with the role of witness to the entire process.
Dance and Eye is less a photography exhibition than a reflection on collaborative artistic creation. It reveals how dance, photography, and the viewer’s gaze collectively contribute to the making of the work, with an emphasis on improvisation, dialogue between artists, and the perception of movement.
