Coire Ruadh (2015)
Co-directed by Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes, Coire Ruadh is both a film and a multi-channel video installation.
It was filmed in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland with dance artists Frank McConnell, Ruth Jensen and Robbie Synge.
This work was commissioned through the Imagining Natural Scotland Fund during the Year of Natural Scotland, funded by Creative Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage.
Katrina and Simon collaborated with Dr Rob McMorran of the Centre for Mountain Studies, University of the Highland and Islands, examining and responding to published data the mapping of ‘wild land’ in Scotland.
The project was to create a performance moving image work that articulates and responds to the borders, zones and different perceptions of ‘wild’ land that formed the basis of the research. As part of the process, Katrina and Simon identified a hillside where the mapped border between ‘wild’ land and ‘not wild’ land that is relatively easily accessible by footpath in the Cairngorms near Glen Feshie.
The artists invited dancers Frank McConnell, Ruth Jensen and Robbie Synge to come to that place, each at a different season of the year, and to respond the landscape through improvised movement. Working on location with cinematographer Katrina McPherson, they created the moving images which Simon Fildes edited.
Whilst there were specific criteria used in the environmental research to identify where the line between ‘wild’ and ‘not wild’ lies, these borders are for many all about a feeling and a personal response: the stepping over an invisible threshold where your shoulders relax and you smell the pine in the air, catch a glimpse of a red squirrel, watch wood ants scurry across a warm rock, lie down in the heather for a while, gazing up at the sky and thinking of nothing, sensing the change of light as the clouds skit across the hillside. Designating areas on the map as ‘wild’ go towards defending those experiences and Coire Ruadh seeks to embody their importance and preciousness.
Screenings →
Première: film and multi-channel installation at John Muir 100 conference, Perth, Scotland. Acquired by Threshold Arts Space, Horsecross Perth.
Single screen presentations include:
Roll Out, Macaus, China, December, 2016
San Francisco Dance Film Festival, USA, October, 2016
ScreenDance, Stockholm, Sweden, April, 2016
POZA, Glasgow, Scotland, February 2016
DiG , Glasgow, Scotland, May, 2015
Dança em Foco, Brazil, August, 2015
Video Danza, Argentina, November, 2015
Opine Dance Film Festival, USA, December 2015
Screendance, London, December, 2015
‘Bodies in Land’ Festival, Wales, 2015
