Pamela Vail
Acting
Biography
Pamela Vail (US) is an improviser, choreographer, performer and educator, an independent artist and a collaborator. Ongoing collaborations include those with filmmaker (since 2012) Jeremy Moss; critically acclaimed New York City-based interdisciplinary collaborative Yanira Castro | a canary torsi (founding member) and The Architects, a performance improvisation quintet (co-founder). She is currently based in Lancaster PA (US), where she is associate professor of dance at Franklin & Marshall College.
Known For
Measured viewpoints positioned on concentric circles dissect and engage the movement of a solo performer in an abandoned mill. The perspective of both movement and place collide.
CENTRE
A fantasia of post-indoctrination, immigration, and iconography. A pageant of wanderers and searchers: Mormon missionaries, a pioneer, polygamists, scouts, hunters, church-goers, and an aspiring prophet walk and walk and walk. A pilgrimage of memory, history, ancestry, and place.
I, Apostate
A filmmaker and a dancer meet in the same location twice a day - once in the early morning, once in the late afternoon - for five consecutive days. They create a series of ten in-camera 16mm films that map the negotiation of improvised dance and cinematography and their collaborative relationship.
Duet Tests
A solo performer (Vail) dances free of societal restraints. Fluid sequences of movement are situated in a non-hierarchical, undetermined space. Transcending time, place and individuality, the film constructs a world of multiple positions and perspectives.